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ERNEST  DOWSON 


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ERNEST  DOWSON 

1888-I897 

REMINISCENCES,  UNPUBLISHED  LETTERS 
AND  MARGINALIA 

BY 

VICTOR  PLARR 


WITH    A    BIBLIOGRAPHY    COMPILED    BY 
H.    GUY    HARRISON 


NEW  YORK 

LAURENCE  J,  GOMME 

M  CM  XIV 


1>5 

zn 


"Already  several  of  the  so-called  minor 
poets  of  the  time  have  won  something  like 
the  indisputableness  of  classics.  Every 
survey  of  recent  poetry  takes  willing  and 
serious  account  of  Francis  Thompson, 
Ernest  Dowson,  Lionel  Johnson  and  John 
Davidson ;  and  for  greater  reasons  than 
that  these  poets  are  no  longer  living." 

From  "  The  Eighteen  Nineties,"  by  Holbrook 
Jackson,  page  191  (Grant  Richards  Ltd., 
1913)- 


ivil?35ya 


CONTENTS 


A  Word  of  Explanation 

PAGE 

9 

Reminiscences    . 

II 

DowsoN  THE  Docker 

31 

Marginalia 

42 

The  Letters — I. 

53 

The  Letters — IL 

70 

The  Letters — III. 

83 

The  Letters — IV. 

.         96 

The  Crisis 

lOI 

DovvsoN  in  Brittany 

106 

The  Last   Phase 

119 

Bibliography 

131 

Index 

143 

A  WORD  OF  EXPLANATION 

Poor  Ernest  Dowson  through  his  sufferings  is 
becoming  almost  as  famous  as  that  earlier  unhappy 
poet  who  by  self-destruction  set  apart  his  life- 
story  in  the  sorrowful  annals  of  literature.  There 
were  perhaps  two  Chattertons — ^who,  at  this  long 
distance  of  time,  can  tell  ?  There  were  certainly 
two  Dowsons — one  the  vexed  and  torn  spirit  of 
the  biographers,  of  Mr  Sherard  and  Mr  Arthur 
Symons,  the  other  a  Dowson  intime,  known,  I 
venture  to  think,  to  very  few,  but  by  those  few 
greatly  loved. 

This  intimate  and  perhaps  essential  Dowson 
appears,  I  am  convinced,  in  these  thirty  or  so 
letters,  now  for  the  first  time  published  in  full  or 
in  part.  In  them  no  ugly  slur  of  passion,  no  ill 
savours,  are  to  be  found.  Instead  we  are  re- 
freshed by  fragrance — transient  and  slight,  perhaps, 
yet  evident — by  fragrance,  be  it  said  again,  and  by 
an  unfailing  touch  of  good  breeding,  a  gracious 
and  insistent  air  of  modesty — by  something 
diffident,  boyishly  shy,  often  beautiful  and  noble. 
■  To  me  the  re-reading  of  these  letters  of  his 
brings  back  my  friend  as  I  knew  him  and  love  to 
9 


10  ERNEST  DOWSON 

remember  him — the  gentleman,  the  kindly,  charm- 
ing boyish  friend,  the  scholar,  the  exquisite  poet. 
I  read  and  re-read  through  gathering  tears,  and 
lay  them  down  when  I  can  see  no  more. 
Frater,  ave,  atque  vale  ! 


ERNEST  DOWSON 


REMINISCENCES 

It  was  early  in  the  year  1888  that  my  old  friend, 
Mr  Charles  Sayle,  that  great  introducer,  first  said 
to  me  :  "  There's  a  man  whom  you  ought  to  know, 
a  young  poet  just  down  from  college,  a  man  exactly 
like  J." — naming  a  well-known  writer;  "only,  if 
possible,  more  so  !  " 

Caesar  and  Pompey  were  very  much  alike,  in 
the  opinion  of  the  black  man,  especially  Pompey. 
And  this  was  the  case  with  Mr  J.  and  Ernest 
Dowson,  the  latter  being  the  more  alike — that  is, 
the  more  representative  of  the  type.  So  possessed 
was  I  with  this  parallelism  that,  like  an  eminent 
bungling  barrister  in  a  law  case  full  of  names,  who 
addresses  the  defendant  by  the  patronymic  of  his 
dupe,  I  constantly  transposed  their  surnames,  and 
for  years  confused  and  puzzled  Ernest  Dowson 
by  addressing  him  as  J.  I  made  somewhat  the 
same  mistake  again  only  yesterday. 

We   met   in   Mr   Sayle's   rooms,    those   quaint 
picturesque  rooms   which   were   to   be  found   in 
Gray's  Inn  years  ago,  and  have  doubtless  not  been 
obliterated  in  that  ancient  place. 
II 


12  ERNEST  DOWSON 

We  were  friends  at  once.  The  child  that  was 
in  both  of  us  was  our  bond.  A  man  may  not 
boast  or  be  too  egotistic  :  do  not,  therefore,  accuse 
me,  courteous  reader,  of  writing  too  much  of 
myself  or  of  indulging  in  self-glorification  when 
I  say  that  I  rejoice  for  evermore  at  the  thought 
that  the  otherwise  deterrent  childish  factor  within 
me  has  at  different  times  opened  to  me  the  gate- 
ways of  the  spirit. 

We  launched  at  once  upon  some  tack  of  con- 
versation about  our  disabilities.  Peter  Pan  had 
not  been  heard  of,  but  we  adumbrated  him. 

"  Shall  you  ever  feel  old  ?  " 

"  No  ;  I  am  static — about  four  years  of  age." 

"  Like  Victor  Hugo  at  the  age  of  eighty  !  " 

"  It's  a  great  drawback  in  applying  for  appoint- 
ments.    One  must  study  the  stodgy  !  " 

"  Yes  ;  fancy  a  creature  of  four  among  old  dry 
gentlemen  with  long  black  legs,  applying  for  a 
secretaryship  to  a  gas-works." 

"  It's  a  nightmare.  I  often  have  them.  I  find 
myself  put  into  parlous  positions,  and  trying  in 
my  dream  to  say — *  The  cumulative  ratiocinations 
of  this  objective  evidence  are  calculated  to  divert 
the  attention  of  the  party  of  immutability  in 
inverse  proportion  to  the  corroborative  dogmatism 
of  the  prior  deponent.  The  issue,  indeed,  could 
not  be  more  luminously  stated.'  I'm  only  four 
years  old,  and  it's  rather  a  strain." 

"  Yes,  yes  !  Wlien  I  transact  serious  business — 
and  I  do  all  day — I  view  myself  from  the  outside 


REMINISCENCES  13 

as  something  strange  and  aw^ful.  They  refer  to 
me  in  reports  without  a  blush  as  *  our  plodding 

friend,  Mr /    Ye  gods,  I  haven't  the  pleasure 

of  the  gentleman's  acquaintance.  Were  it  possible 
to  talk  as  you  do  in  nightmares  one  would  be  very 
eminent  in  a  year's  time.  One  would  be  a  big 
barrister  or  in  Parliament." 

"No,  one  would  write  for  The  Times  and  have 
a  masterly  grasp — of  bimetallism,  say.  D'you 
know  that  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  in  the  Sixth  Form 
of  a  Public  School,  I  put  important  leading  articles 
aside  as  I  should  put  Sanscrit  or  classical  German 
aside  ?     Couldn't  understand  a  sentence  !  " 

"  Numbers  of  people,  I  fancy,  regard  poetry  in 
the  same  light  all  their  lives." 

We  cited  old  forgotten  authors,  to  whom  one 
dares  not  now  refer  without  a  blush,  or  to  whom 
one  adverts  desperately  by  way  of  paradox,  the 
kind  of  paradox  in  which  the  elderly  are  indulged 
because  they  are  known  to  have  suffered  some 
disappointments . 

Shall  I  say  that,  at  that  early  date  in  our 
acquaintance,  Loti  was  one  of  these  forgotten  ? 
Dowson  first  spoke  of  Loti,  and  I  have  a  dim 
inkling  of  a  recollection  that  he  spoke  also  of 
Plato,  in  at  least  one  of  whose  immortal  dialogues 
he  rejoiced  and  had  probably  been  ''ploughed" 
during  his  mysterious  sojourn  at  Queen's 
College,  Oxford. 

We  saw  much  of  one  another  from  this  time 
forward.     He  was  singularly  fresh,  young,  eager. 


L 


14  ERNEST  DOWSON 

sympathetic,  his  charming  face  unscathed  by  any 
serious  sorrows  or  dissipations. 

There  followed,  in  his  career,  a  strange  period 
of  rowdiness — I  can  use  no  other  word — of  the 
undergraduate  type — that  is  to  say,  it  was  quaint 
and  boyish. 

I  occupied  the  most  uncomfortable  rooms  in  the 
world  in  Great  Russell  Street,  and  often,  late  at 
night,  Dowson  crept  into  the  house  and  begged  a 
bed.  I  was  so  selfish  as  to  suggest  a  sofa,  and  on  a 
horrible  horsehair  sofa,  or  on  the  floor,  in  a  blatant 
parlour,  he  often  slept,  under  such  blankets  as 
could  be  found.  He  seems  to  have  kept  this 
custom  up,  for  Mr  Edgar  Jepson,  in  an  admir- 
able account  of  him,  published  in  The  Academy 
in  1906,  says  that  Ernest  Dowson  often  slept  in 
his  arm-chair.  It  was  an  unwise  custom  at 
best,  but  we  did  not  suspect  the  frailty  of  his 
health. 


Ordinarily  a  Rechabite  in   those  days,  I  had 

nothing  to  offer  him  but  water  at  an  hour  after  mid- 

,  night .  He  drank  his  tumbler  of  water,  and  remarked 

good-humouredlj/  :^''  This  reminds  me  of  Milton," 

who  always  drank  a  glass  of  water  after  supper. 

A  legend  has  arisen  of  an  inebriate  Ernest 
Dowson.  It  has  been  generated  chiefly  in  the  two 
closely  allied  consciences  of  Amercia  and  of  Biitish 
Nonconformity.  Personally,  in  eight  3/ears  or  so, 
I  remember  only  a  trifling  aberration  from  the 
path  of  temperance,  when  he  leant,  smiling  medi- 
tatively, against  a  lamp-post,  exactly  where  the 


REMINISCENCES  15 

Irving    statue    now   stands.     He    manifestly   re- 
quired support. 

A  lady,  who  had  been  mercifully  blind  to  his 
condition,  was  being  shown  into  a  cab,  and  I  shall 
never  forget — I  see  the  scene  now  vividly — how 
he  leapt  from  his  dream — he  had  been  standing 
storklike,  one  leg  crossed  over  the  other — and 
presented  the  lady,  or  the  cabby,  with  her  fare. 
It  was  done  in  a  flash  of  lightning,  with  a  dreamy 
delicacy  quite  incomparable.  She  is  dead  of  con- 
sumption, poor  thing,  so  this  trifling  reminiscence 
hurts  no  one  !  He  took  out  a  florin  and  I  wcn- 
dered  at  the  time  that  he  had  so  much  money  in 
his  pocket.  Everybody  is,  in  these  pallid  days, 
called  *'  drunk  "  if  he  is  ever  so  little  elated,  but 
when  I  was  a  small  boy,  in  St  Andrews  in  Fifeshire, 
only  those  were  called  drunk  who  lay  in  the  gutter 
on  their  backs.  Surely  some  middle  way  of 
speech  might  be  discovered  between  these  two 
extremes. 

L  Sometimes,  with  other  merry  revellers,  he 
arrived  in  the  street  outside  my  rooms,  and  bawled 
my  name,  in  chorus  with  his  friends,  for  many 
minutes.  The  long  and  dreary  street  must  have 
become  aware  of  my  existence,  and,  in  my  most 
uncomfortable  bed,  I  reflected  at  the  time  that 
never  yet  had  an  ancient  patronymic  figured  in 
such  wise  ! 

These  friends — let  the  Muse  of  History  descend 
and  unbend — called  themselves  "  Bingers,"  and 
to  "  binge  "  was  to  behave  and  to  potate  most 


/ 


i6  ERNEST  DOWSON 

eccentrically.  The  Benson  Company  are  said  still 
to  understand  the  word. 

Those  were  scapegrace  days — and  some  amusing 
traditions  could  be  related  concerning  them — but, 
Lord !  as  Mr  Pepys  would  have  said,  they  w^ere 
nothing  more.  At  all  times  they  were  far,  very 
far,  from  the  depth  of  lurid  dissipation  that  is 
being  allowed  to  cover  the  poet's  good  fame,  unless 
it  be  rescued  betimes. 

And  Mr  Jepson's  kindly  apology  for  his  glass  of 
absinthe  before  dinner  was  not  really  necessary  in 
1906,  seeing  that  Dowson  was  an  amateur  of  m^any 
good  plebeian  French  customs,  among  which  the 
apperitif — often  consisting  of  absinthe — is  one. 
Englishmen  dislike  this  poison,  which  they  liken 
to  paregoric,  a  mysterious  mixture  not  known  to 
Continentals,  or  to  Ernest  Dowson. 

His  short  career,  indeed,  may  be  said  to  divide 
itself  into  three  periods,  of  which  the  second  alone 
really  concerns  us,  for  it  is  the  finest.  In  the  first 
period,  which  lasted  from  1888,  or  a  little  earlier, 
to  1891  or  thereabouts,  the  poet  was  after  all  only 
in  his  green  salad  days,  just  as  any  other  normal 
youth  might  be.  Nor  would  it  be  necessary  to 
allude  to  them  save  for  the  emergence  of  a  miracle 
— the  miracle  of  poetry.  For  all  the  while  that 
Ernest  Dowson  ran  foolishly  and  noisily  about 
London,  sleeping  on  sofas,  consorting  with  the  last 
of  the  Bob  Sawyers,  and  proving  on  the  whole 
agreeably  unwise,  his  muse  was  fluttering  into  life. 

Suddenly,  we  were  all,  as  it  were,  startled  by  a 


REMINISCENCES  17 

perfect  poem  from  his  pen.  We  had  not,  so  to 
speak,  expected  it  of  the  pleasant  youth,  who 
played  billiards  punctually  at  six  o'clock  every 
evening  and  smoked  rather  vile  Vevey  cigars  ! 

The  poets  have  often  presented  this  paradox. 
Thus  the  young  Shakespeare  meditated  "  Venus 
and  Adonis  "  among  the  deer-stealers,  and  Byron, 
the  dandy,  wooed  the  muse  in  the  intervals  of  the 
deals  at  Almack's.  It  is  a  truism  to  say  that 
poetry  will  out  even  in  the  most  adverse  circum- 
stances, and  perhaps  because  of  them.  How 
many  of  our  bards,  for  instance,  have  been 
tempered  after  passing  through  the  purifying  fires 
of  an  English  public  school,  w^here  to  be  a  poet  is  to 
rank  vilely  with  pale  young  martyrs  who  say  their 
prayers,  "  swots  "  who  conscientiously  do  their 
lessons.  Radicals,  fat-eaters,  and  other  pariahs 
hateful  to  the  soul  of  Boy  ! 

Dowson  had  escaped  the  public  school  Hinnom- 
fires,  and  at  Oxford,  where  poetry  is  an  honoured 
tradition,  he  can  surely  not  have  suffered,  but  his 
early  associations  in  London  were  in  piquant 
contrast  to  his  genius.  Most  of  his  friends  cannot 
have  dreamt  that  he  was  a  poet  at  all. 

Perhaps  this  is  as  it  should  be.  What  chance, 
after  all,  had  young  M.  de  Lamartine,  whose 
adoring  family  helped  him  to  shut  himself  up  in  his 
bedroom  and  to  fast  while  composing  poetry  in  his 
teens  ?  I  am  French  enough  by  race,  and  old- 
fashioned  enough,  to  adore  the  orthodox  romantics, 
but  often,  in  reading  them,  I  wonder  whether  they 


i8  ERNEST  DOWSON 

would  have  survived  the  kicks,  and  almost  the 
obloquy,  which  must,  at  some  time  or  other,  and 
in  varying  degrees,  have  been  the  portion  of  the 
schoolboy  Shelleys,  Cloughs,  Matthew  Arnolds, 
and  Lionel  Johnsons. 

And  here  is  yet  another  paradox.  Whence  have 
we  the  gift  of  poetry  in  any  generation  ?  From 
whom  in  the  past  does  this  divine  essence  distil  ? 
What  accounts  for  that  Latin  Ernest  Dowson,  that 
belated  counterpart  of  Catullus,  Propertius  and 
the  rest. 

Many  of  us  knew  Ernest  Dowson 's  father,  a 
remarkable  man,  a  wit,  the  friend  of  half  the 
interesting  artists  and  men  of  letters  of  his  genera- 
tion, the  relative  of  Browning's  ^  "  Waring,"  one 
holding  the  full  and  true  tradition  of  Elizabeth 
Barrett  Browning  through  the  Barretts,  and, 
through  his  friendship  with  Severn,  of  John 
Keats.  But  this  elder  Mr  Dowson  did  not  account 
for  a  Catullus,  nor  did  Ernest  Dowson 's  mother, 
accomplished  and  intellectual  as  that  lady  was. 

It  is  true  that  the  poet  was  wont  to  shake  his 

head  gloomily  over  a  print  or  pencil  sketch  of  an 

ancestor  engaged  in  theatricals,  on  a  queer  stage 

with  spindling  Corinthian  columns,  in  the  period 

of  George  IV.  !     But  at  most  that  ancestor  can 

only  have  accounted  for  the  Vevey  cigars  and  the 

vie  de  Bohhne.     Whence — from  what  older  stock 

— came    *'  Amor    Umbratilis,"    and     "  Supreme 

Unction,"  and  that  glorious  poem  which  bursts 

forth  in  one  of  these  letters  ? 

^  One  of  Robert  Browning's  early  letters  is  addressed 
to  a  Dowson. 


REMINISCENCES  19 

"  Amor  Umbratilis,"  was  one  of  the  first  poems 
that  attracted  much  attention.     It  was  pubHshed, 
if  I  remember  rightly,  by  Mr  Herbert  Home  in 
The  Century  Guild  Hobby  Horse  together  with  a 
batch  of  the  poet's  other  most  noteworthy  verses. 
The  MS.  of    it,  in  pencil,  lies    before  me  now, 
inscribed  on  the  back  of  a  fierce  letter  referring  to 
the  poet's  Oxford  bills,  which,  he  told  me,  he  had 
agreed    to    pay    by    degrees.     "  You    have    not 
returned  this  promissory  note  as  arranged — please  ^ 
do  so  at  once."     And  Ernest  Dowson  has  immor-''^^ 
talised   this   gruffness  with   one  of   the  loveliest 
elegies  in  the  language  !     One  wonders  if  he  chose 
his  scrap  of  paper  of  set  purpose.     The  solicitor's 
date  on  it  is  October  7,  1890.     He  sent  me,  and 
I  believe  others  of  his  friends,  numbers  of  MS. 
poems.     I  have  thirteen  of  his  best — all,  in  fact, 
except  the  now  famous  *'  Cynara."     One  is  written   , . 
on  the  back  of  a  letter  from  a  stockbroker :  "  I  ' 
have  advised  you  a  good  many  times  to  join  the 

*  S Syndicate,'  and  you  might  have  got  the 

shares  at  one  pound  each,  but  you  have  let  the 
chance  slip  through  your  fingers  and  the  price  is 
now  three  pounds." 

To  think  what  a  chance  our  poet  missed  !  The 
letters  are  reproving  and  rather  uncivil,  but  a  law 
of  libel,  designed  in  a  democratic  age  to  protect 
queer  fish  from  being  caught,  prevents  me  from 
printing  the  writers'  names.  Perhaps,  however, 
I  ought  to  do  so  in  the  interests  of  historic  truth 
and  to  advertise  their  respective  firms. 


A 


20  ERNEST  DOWSON 

The  poet  told  me  that  he  adored  gambling,  but 
I  have  no  evidence  that  he  gambled.  He  loved 
excitement,  as  all  true  artists  do,  and  gambling 
is  one  of  the  attainable  excitements.  "  II  faut  etre 
toujour s  un  feu  ivre,"  he  was  fond  of  quoting  from 
Baudelaire,  and  he  frequently  complained  that  a 
long  bout  of  early  to  bed  and  early  to  rise,  combined 
with  reasonable  diet,  etc.,  knocked  him  up,  as 
Lord  B3n:on  would  have  said,  damnably. 

I  am  hastening  to  the  poet's  second  period,  the 
worthiest  one,  but  the  first  detains  me  at  every 
turn.  We  smiled  at  him  then.  He  was  a  dear, 
queer  fellow  !  He  said  to  me  once  that  he  rather 
disliked  "  humour,"  and  yet  he  was  half  con- 
sciously humorous  always.  His  education  before 
the  Oxford  period,  itself  a  "  veiled  period,"  to 
quote  Borrow's  phrase,  was  wrapped  in  mystery. 
His  childhood,  he  tells  us,  in  a  marginal  note — 
I  shall  refer  to  these  later — was  pagan.  "  All 
these  fluctuations  and  agonies  of  a  hypersensitive, 
morbid  childhood  with  Hebraic  traditions  are  to 
[mel  incomprehensible,"  he  writes.  "  My  child- 
hood was  pagan."  As  to  natural  religion,  which 
belongs  to  childhood,  it  was  "  a  phase,  which  at 
no  time  of  my  life  have  I  ever  undergone  or  under- 
stood." 

A  truly  charming  pastel  of  his  little  wistful  ideal 
face  at  the  age  of  four,  by  the  late  W.  G.  Wills, 
hung  over  the  mantelpiece  of  his  family's  drawing- 
room  in  their  house  at  Forest  Row  in  1888-1890. 
The  young  expression  was  unforgettable,  and  this 


REMINISCENCES  21 

is  perhaps  the  only  portrait  of  Ernest  Dowson  that 
remains,  or  has  been  extant,  besides  Mr  WilHam 
Rothenstein's  sketch  and  the  reproduction  of  a 
photograph  of  him  in  a  Queen's  College  "  blazer," 
prefixed  to  his  "  Collected  Poems."  At  the  time 
of  writing  this  Dr  Greene  tells  me  that  he  once 
asked  Ernest  Dowson  to  lunch  to  meet  the  famous 
Mr  Sargent,  but  the  painter  was  apparently 
unimpressed  by  his  possible  sitter. 

He  received  no  regular  education,  unless  we 
count  his  one  half -mythic  year  at  college.  He 
had  learnt  Latin  from  an  Italian  priest  in  a 
mountain  village  in  Italy — possibly  Senta,  a  place 
beloved  by  him.  At  least  this  is  the  tradition  as 
it  came  to  me  from  him.  In  many  ways  he  was 
surprisingly  and  refreshingly  ignorant.  Quite 
gravely  once  he  averred  to  me  that  he  supposed  the 
Red  Indians  in  the  United  States  greatly  out- 
numbered the  white  men,  and  that  he  hoped  the 
natives  in  their  war-paint  would  soon  march  on 
New  York,  destroy  it,  and  thus  break  the  back  of 
transatlantic  civilisation  !  Yet  he  was  the  friend 
of  some  charming  Americans,  and  perhaps  his 
truest  admirers  are  in  the  States. 

Of  modem  science,  like  most  of  his  literary  y^ 
generation,  he  knew  nothing  at  all,  nor  of  history, 
and  he  commented  wonderingly  upon  another's 
habit  of  always  reading  it.  He  envied  a  poet 
whose  objective  vignettes  of  periods  and  peoples 
struck  him  as  a  tapestry.  "  It  is  always  that  power 
of  weaving  tapestries  that  I  envy  and  admire  |  " 


22  ERNEST  DOWSON 

I  am  setting  down  my  recollections  of  him  at 
random,  and  before  I  forget  them,  and  there  is  no 
need  to  be  systematic  in  a  labour  of  love.  In 
English  politics  he  was  vague.  The  still  mighty 
voice  of  Gladstone  appealed  to  him  not  at  all. 
He  disregarded  the  Irish  Question — all  questions 
of  the  day.  Philanthropy  and  socialism  bored 
him.  Like  Lionel  Johnson  he  was  interested  in 
the  White  Rose  League,  and  told  me  that  he  had 
been  solemnly  presented  to  the  authentic  descend- 
ant and  last  representative  of  the  Stuarts — not, 
by  the  bye,  the  Duke  of  Buccleugh,  but  a  solemn 
lady  with  her  grey  hair  down  her  back,  who  stood, 
pathetically  enough,  in  the  upper  chamber  of  a 
small  restaurant  in  Soho,  where  the  restaurateur 
and  his  wife  acted  as  her  chamberlains.  The  lady 
strongly  resembled  Charles  L,  he  averred.  From 
the  French  point  of  view  he  became  a  Boulangist 
— some  well-known  actress  had  just  done  so,  who 
knew  about  as  much  of  politics  as  her  pet  lemur — 
not  because  he  knew  anything  of  French  affairs 
or  history  either,  but  because  he  wished  to  be 
"  agin  the  government."  ^  To  him  Paris  was  a  city 
full  of  decadents,  topped  by  Verlaine.  Quite  the 
feeblest  things  he  has  written,  in  my  humble  opinion, 
are  his  imitations  of  that  errant  genius.  Indeed, 
Verlaine,  and  a  certain  parasite  on  the  genius  of 
others,  who  is  dead,  and  shall  be  nameless,  were, 
in  great  measure,  his  per  vert  ers.  One  had,  in  the 
late  eighties  and  early  nineties,  to  be  preposter- 
ously French,  and  to  spectators  of  this  psycho- 


REMINISCENCES  23 

logical  aberration,  especially  to  genuine  French 
spectators,  whose  earliest  recollections  were  a 
darkling  sky  streaked  with  the  bomb-trails  of 
a  Night  of  Terror  in  1870,  the  sight  of  young 
Englishmen  discovering  an  unworthy  side  of 
France  would  have  been  disgusting  had  it  not 
been  mainly  comic] 

Stray  Gauls  used  to  be  imported  to  grace 
literary  circles  here.  I  remember  one  such — a 
rare  instance  of  a  rough  Frenchman — ^to  whom 
Dowson  was  devoted.  When  a  Gaul  appeared  in 
a  coterie  we  were  either  silent,  like  the  schoolgirls 
in  their  French  conversation  hour,  or  we  talked  a 
weird  un-French  French  like  the  ladies  in  some  of 
Du  Maurier's  drawings. 

"  Ey-ce-quer  voo  connoissay  leys  peyntoors  de 
Burne- Jones,  Mossoo  Dubwaw  ?  " 

Poor  Oscar  Wilde,  I  particularly  noted,  dis- 
tinguished himself  in  the  rich  old  fearless  French 
of  Stratford-atte-Bowe.  Hence  I  venture  to 
disagree  with  the  great  Monsieur  Andre  Gide,  who 
said  "  he  had  scarcely  any  accent,  at  least  only 
what  it  pleased  him  to  affect  when  it  might  give 
a  somewhat  new  or  strange  appearance  to  a  word 
— for  instance,  he  used  purposely  to  pronounce 
scepticisme  as  skepticisme."  This  he  did,  I  will 
swear,  because  he  was  a  Greek  scholar,  a  colla- 
borator with  Professor  Mahaffy,  and  for  no  other 
reason. 

But  let  not  any  Frenchman  who  may  chance  to 
read  this  passage  begin  to  crow  over  us  !     With 


24  ERNEST  DOWSON 

the  solitary  exception  of  my  father's  old  friend, 
Adolphe  Wurtz,  the  great  chemist,  who  was  an 
Alsatian,  no  Frenchman  whom  I  have  met  has  ever 
-  spoken  English  otherwise  than  as  a  Frenchman, 
prettily  enough,  it  is  true.  M.  Wurtz  spoke 
English  perfectly.  Born  bilinguals  are  few  and 
far  between.  The  one  I  know  best  speaks  neither 
language  with  absolute  correctness. 

Dowson's  own  French  was  dim,  but  his  admira- 
tion of  France  shone  out,  and  puts  him  among  the 
virtual  pioneers  of  the  Entente  Cordiale. 

He  was  singularly  well  read  in  French  literature, 
a  curious  and  indefatigable  student  of  that  wide 
source  of  culture.  With  Balzac  he  was  entirely 
conversant,  and  he  perused  Stendhal  diligently 
and  with  often  repeated  admiration.  Few  have 
followed  Dowson  so  far.  He  rejoiced  in  Chamfort, 
but  his  ideas  on  the  French  revolutionary  epoch 
were  confined  to  this — that  the  aristocrats  died 
like  great  gentlemen,  and  the  opinion  was  fortified 
for  him,  in  my  presence,  by  a  famous  aesthetic 
friend,  who  told  him  that  they  always  went  to 
their  deaths  wearing  white  satin  clothes  and  with 
red  roses  in  their  coat  lapels  !  There  was  evidently 
some  confusion  here  with  what  is  recorded  of  Lord 
Ferrers,  in  his  wedding-dress,  or  Montrose  in  his 
"  fine  scarlet."  Of  his  love  of  Loti's  work  I  have 
spoken,  and  he  introduced  me,  at  an  early  date, 
to  the  prose  poems  of  Baudelaire,  which  he  has 
y  imitated,  rather  tragically,  in  "  Decorations." 
"  Les  Yeux  des  Pauvres,"  which  describes  the 


REMINISCENCES  25 

wondering,  half-mystical  look  in  the  eyes  of  poor 
people  gazing  into  the  window  of  a  restaurant, 
arrested  his  attention  to  the  last  degree. 

In  England's  literary  history  and  literature  he 
was  widely  read,  too,  and  of  the  Americans  he 
most  admired  Hawthorne  and  Henry  James  and, 
I  think,  Bret  Harte. 

To  be  such  a  shining  stylist  as  he  proved  himself 
he  certainly  must  have  ranged  through  the  finest 
masterpieces.  There  can  be  no  doubt  of  that. 
His  gift  of  style  allures,  perhaps,  the  most  in  his 
cameo-like  verse.  In  the  prose,  on  which  he  set 
extreme  value,  there  is  sometimes  an  apparent 
touch  of  labour  and  preciosity.  There  are  petulant 
Gallicisms,  for  instance,  set  down  with  delibera- 
tion. He  was  fond  of  quoting  Flaubert — was  it 
Flaubert  ? — who  sat  long  in  meditation  in  front 
of  a  blackboard  with  alternative  words  chalked 
thereon.  Dowson  would  have  had  me  believe  that 
he,  too,  pondered  the  mot  juste  for  hours.  It 
was  impossible  to  point  out  to  him  that  English 
has  two  and  a  half  vocabularies  and  French  only 
one,  for  he  disliked  anything  in  the  nature  of 
common  knowledge,  and  had  all  the  modern 
horror  of  being  thought  well-informed  or  of 
acquiring  information.  Yet  he  rarely  insulted 
one's  time-honoured  susceptibilities  by  talking 
of  this  or  that  being  bourgeois,  and,  though,  like 
many  of  his  type,  he  tried  not  to  believe  what  was 
unpalatable  to  him,  he  was  too  good-natured  not 
to  be  really  catholic  in  taste. 


26  ERNEST  DOWSON 

The  blackboard,  which  in  England  we  then 
snobbishly  associated  with  primary  education  to 
such  an  extent  that  we  laboriously  did  without  it 
in  the  universities,  and  the  mot  juste,  which  is  an 
exotic  too,  were  part  of  a  general  system  of  things 
French,  of  which  at  times  he  was  an  almost  excited 
apostle.  Thus  he  constantly  insisted  that  the 
rime  riche  is  a  beauty  in  poetry.  A  brutal 
Philistine  pointing  out  to  him  that  the  rime  riche 
is  a  bore  in  French  and  an  imbecility  in  English 
versification,  he  so  far  acquiesced  as  seldom  to  use 
it.  In  common  with  Lionel  Johnson  he  found  an 
^  occult  virtue  in  the  Alexandrine,  but  again  did  not 
press  his  admiration  to  the  point  of  using  it 
overmuch.  That  he  employed  it  with  grand 
effect  on  occasion — when  a  long  line  is  necessary — 
I  do  not  deny. 

His  charm  was  such  that  one  agreed  tacitly  to 
disagree  about  a  host  of  subjects.  And  then,  too, 
there  was  always  the  saving  common  ground, 
between  several  of  us,  of  love  of  beauty  and  of  a 
fine  style  and  serious  art.  He  felt  many  things 
deeply,  and  it  is  a  truism  to  say  that  he  achieved 
supremely  good  work.  As  a  thoughtful  critic  he 
was  not  as  those  who  frighten  scholarly  lovers  of 
the  pageantry  of  Time  into  silence  by  their  sneers 
at  all  that  happened  more  than  a  week  ago,  yet 
give  you  nothing — nothing — to  take  its  place. 
Nor,  feeling  deeply  as  he  did,  was  he  of  those  who 
at  bottom  have  no  feeling,  though  babbling  per- 
petually of  culture — those  "  who  swallow   their 


REMINISCENCES  27 

opinions  in  platoons,"  and  when  you  ask  them 
what  they  think  of  this  or  that,  or  so-and-so,  seem 
to  listen  and  perpend  as  though  waiting  for  a 
guiding  spirit  voice  from  the  head  of  their  coterie, 
their  suburb,  or  their  favourite  review. 

I  confess,  though,  that  in  defending  the  obvious 
one  was  not  so  bold  with  him  as  with  Lionel  John- 
son, a  dear  friend  of  both  of  us.  Johnson  was  a  very 
full  man,  Ernest  Dowson  a  good-humoured  eclectic, 
with  his  patches  of  cultivation  and  deserts  between. 

The  passion  for  things  French,  for  the  South, 
may  perhaps  have  come  to  Dowson  from  his  early 
wanderings  out  of  England.  There  was  a  certain 
originality  in  this  passion,  which  belies  mere 
affectation.  And  the  charm  and  the  genius  of  the 
man  depend  greatly  on  this  originality,  which  was 
for  years  increasingly  at  death-grips  with  squadrons 
of  affectations.     Sometimes  these  bore  him  down. 

They  began,  perhaps,  by  his  profession  of  a 
grand  passion  for  Wagner's  operas,  but  a  Philistine 
friend  of  his  was  so  wicked  as  to  surmise  that  he 
valued  the  music  because  he  was  taken  to  hear  it 
by  a  fashionable  man-about-town.  He  dressed  to 
go  to  these  concerts,  yet  of  evening  dress  he  had 
a  quite  old-fashioned  Bohemian  horror. 

As  his  reputation  increased  he  was  taken  up  by 
numbers  of  brilliant  quidnuncs,  and  some  of  his 
faithful  friends  suffered  pangs  of  jealousy,  like  poor 
little  Frederika,  deserted  by  Goethe,  when  he 
could  not  sup  with  them  because  he  was  going  to 
sup,  less  comfortably  perhaps,  with  young  Mr  and 


28  ERNEST  DOWSON 

Mrs  So-and-So,  people  who  had  only  just  heard  of 
him.  Of  course  he  excused  himself  by  expressing 
intense  admiration  for  young  Mr  So-and-So 's 
little  book  !  A  telegram  came  one  day  from  the 
Oscar  Wilde  entourage,  peremptorily  ordering 
him  to  appear  at  the  Cafe  Royal  to  lunch  with 
the  then  great  man.  His  excitement  was  marked  : 
he  was  flattered  and  fluttered,  though  a  Philistine 
friend  suggested  that  a  reply  should  be  sent  urging 
the  great  paradox-monger  to  go  to  a  warm  place 
or  to  take  lessons  in  ordinary  social  formalities. 

Young  Mr  Ezra  Pound,  to  whom  Dowson  is  a 
kind  of  classical  myth,  just  as  the  ancients  are  a 
m5^h  to  us  all,  tells  me  a  story,  told  him  in  turn  by 
a  good  recorder,  of  how  Dowson  went  to  see  poor 
Wilde  in  Dieppe  after  the  debacle,  and  how  he 
endeavoured  to  reform  his  morality  by  diverting 
it  at  least  into  a  natural  channel.  It  is  at  best  a 
smoking-room  anecdote,  not  fit  for  exact  repeti- 
tion. I  suppose  they  drank  absinthe  together  in  a 
big  tawdry  noisy  cafe  near  that  queer  odoriferous 
,j>  ^  j  fish-market,  where  they  sell  all  the  monsters  of  the 
:>*       'i  sea  which  English  fishermen  reject. 

*  Here,  for  Dowson 's  sake,  entire  frankness  is 
necessary.  During  the  eight  or  nine  years  of  our 
friendship,  he  told  me  often — perhaps  repeatedly 
— ^that  he  simply  could  not  understand  the 
*'  invert  "  point  of  view.  It  did  not  appeal  to  him 
in  the  least.  Honesty  bids  me  put  this  defini- 
tively on  record  in  these  late  mjrthopoeic  days. 
And  therewith  I  desire  to  drop  the  subject. 


X 


REMINISCENCES  29 

But  his  wish  to  go  and  visit  poor  Wilde  was  on 
a  par  with  much  else  in  his  last  phase.  When  he 
went  to  Dieppe,  he  was  evidently  following  the 
trend  of  his  mind.  He  had  fallen  on  evil  days — 
felt,  probably,  the  approach  of  the  end — was  over- 
shadowed, poor  dear  fellow,  by  domestic  tragedy, 
personal  chagrin  and  disillusionment,  financial 
worry  and  the  rest.  Moreover,  through  the  irony 
of  Fate,  he  was  himself  becoming  a  fashionable 
writer,  his  pen  much  sought  after  by  the  shrewd 
and  the  parasitic.  He  had  to  do  something  that 
would  keep  him  "  in  the  movement,"  that  delusion  ^^ 
of  most  of  us.  At  the  same  time  he  may  have  felt 
that  a  man  whose  heart  the  Fates  had  broken  may 
well  show  sympathy  with  another  who  has 
deliberately  broken  his  own  heart.  So  he  went  to 
Dieppe,  probably  with  a  mixture  of  motives,  to 
pay  his  call,  to  figure  with  his  broken  heart. 

As  poets  should,  he  certainly  loved  flattery,  and 
was  prodigal  of  it  to  those  he  loved,  but  there  was 
a  time — and  this  came  in  the  midst  of  all  his 
troubles — when  it  threatened  his  equilibrium  as 
an  artist. 

I  may  seem  to  have  written  these  last  few  pages 
with  some  appearance  of  morgue,  but  I  really 
write  in  sorrow  rather  than  in  any  spirit  of  bitter- 
ness —  in  affectionate  sorrow  and  with  infinite 
regret. 

Ernest  Dowson  is  numbered  by  Mr  Holbrook 
Jackson,  in  his  admirable  if  somewhat  mytho- 
poetical    record    of    the    "  Eighteen    Nineties," 


30  ERNEST  DOWSON 

among  the  interesting  band,  including  Wilde, 
Beardsley,  and  Johnson,  who  joined  the  Church 
of  Rome  in  what  we  now  consider  the  period  of 
"  the  Decadence." 

Lionel  Johnson,  at  least,  could  give  chapter  and 
verse  for  his  conversion.  Hardly  so  Dowson. 
I  shall  never  forget  the  day  of  his  admittance  to 
the  Church.  He  came  to  me  rather  excitedly,  and 
yet  shook  hands  with  weak  indecision .  His  hesitat- 
ing hand-shake,  alas !  always  betrayed  a  sorrowful 
fatigue. 

"  I  have  been  admitted,"  he  said,  but  he 
seemed  disappointed,  for  the  heavens  had  not 
fallen,  nor  had  a  sign  been  vouchsafed.  The 
priest  who  had  admitted  him  had  done  so  quite 
casually  and  had  seemed  bored.  Afterwards,  it 
seemed  to  me,  he  forgot  all  about  his  religion  with 
surprising  alacrity.  Only  his  poetry  bears  witness 
to  his  romantic  admiration  of  a  creed,  which, 
after  all,  he  shares  with  many  Protestants  and 
Agnostics.  ^ 

Respecting  sincere  Catholics  ^  as  I  do,  I  was 
keenly  annoyed  with  his  conversion — with  this 
kind  of  conversion.  It  was  comparable  to  the  way 
in  which  our  clever  young  men  to-day,  with  no 
knowledge  of  biology,  folk-lore  or  the  rationale  of 
English  constitutional  history,  become  socialists. 
But  I  held  my  tongue.  Our  literary  life  is  a  long 
reticence  at  best. , 

^  I  trust  the  poet's  Catholic  friends,  who  are  also  my 
friends,  will  forgive  me  for  stating  the  case  as  it  struck  me. 


DOWSON  THE  DOCKER 

A  TEDIOUS  commonplace  of  conversation,  derived 
from  journalism,  is  to  the  effect  that  letter-writing 
is  a  vanished  art.  People  have  no  leisure  :  they 
live  in  a  rush.  Yet  it  would,  perhaps,  be  more 
true  to  say  that  the  average  Englishman,  even  in 
the  days  of  the  Grays  and  the  Horace  Walpoles, 
was  never  a  letter-writer.  His  native  pride,  his 
innate  reticence,  restrain  him.  How  many  of  us 
are  acquainted  vv^ith  clever  people  whose  curt 
missives  are  as  deadly  dull,  as  little  illustrative 
of  the  truth  that  is  in  them,  as  the  inscriptions  on 
Scottish  tombstones,  or  on  poor  Ernest  Dowson's 
tombstone,  which  I  think  I  saw  one  day  when 
attending  the  funeral  of  that  literary  and  scientific 
giant,  the  late  Sir  John  Simon  ? 

Ernest  Dowson  enjoyed  much  leisure.  And, 
at  all  times,  he  abhorred  rush,  a  phrase  which  is 
ordinarily  our  excuse  for  not  bearing  in  mind  the 
close  ties  of  clan,  family  and  friendship.  He  loved 
to  write  a  letter,  probably  as  a  relief  to  the  excite- 
ment of  literary  composition.  It  may  be  he  wrote 
thousands  of  letters  in  his  time,  all  so  exquisitely 
phrased  as  to  suggest  affectation.  His  last  letter 
to  me,  with  a  touch  of  heart-break  in  it,  is  better 
written  than  any  of  the  rest. 

31 


32  ERNEST  DOWSON 

His  was  a  beautiful  handwriting,  the  clear 
script  of  a  poet  with  a  sense  of  form,  who  has 
learnt  to  write  Greek,  has  learnt  free-hand  drawing, 
has  engaged  in  clerkly  avocations,  and  sets  a 
proper  value  on  what  he  writes.  Shelley,  with  his 
exquisite  script,  was  one  such.  Also  Alexander 
Pope.  Pope's  fascinating  simple  notes  to  those  he 
loved  lie  before  me  in  MS.  as  I  write  this  perhaps 
rather  conventional  essay  on  handwriting.  Poor 
crooked  Pgpe,  poor  unhappy  Ernest  Dowson  ! 
;  Once,  in ;  his  delightful  old  dock-house  j(/)ac^  all 
'  the  critics  and  official  biographers) ,  I  surprised  him 
inditing  exquisitely,  and  in  a  sort  of  court-hand, 
a  huge  bill  addressed  to  some  shipowner.  The 
document  was  a  large  quarto  sheet,  and  there  were 
fascinating  items  to  this  effect : 


To  caulking 

£50     0 

0 

To  scraping  off  barnacles    . 

£25     0 

0 

To  re-painting 

£48  10 

0 

To  mending  pumps,  captain's  dog's 

kennel,  and  supplying  buckets 

£23  17 

3i 

The  total  was  a  fat,  formidable,  comfortable 
amount.  It  totalled,  I  remember,  something  not 
far  short  of  £158. 

To  my  merely  bourgeois  mind  this  appeared  a 
desirable  sum,  and  as  I  looked  over  the  shoulder 
of  my  poetical  friend  I  could  not  help  marvelling 
that  he  wrote  this  sort  of  thing  as  one  to  the 
manner  born. 


DOWSON  THE  DOCKER  33 

"  What  a  delight  it  is  to  be  a  docker,"  I  said,  very 
humbly,  "  and  who  would  have  thought  of  you  as 
inditing  these  fat  lucrative  bills  ?  " 

He  wriggled  his  shoulders,  and  smiled  his  in- 
scrutable smile,  the  smile  of  a  man  who  ponders. 
He  certainly  made  out  the  account  as  though  he 
loved  it  and  knew  his  work  thoroughly. 

Despite  this  evidence  of  an  amiable  interest 
in  shipowners,  Ernest  Dowson  and  his  father 
explained  that  they  did  not  like  them,  as  these 
had  now  formed  a  habit,  mainly  accounted  for 
by  the  then  imminent  decadence  of  the  Port  of 
London,  of  "  lying  off  "  in  mid-Thames  instead  of 
"  coming  into  dock  "  in  the  time-honoured  manner. 
And  this  relieved  my  apprehensions,  for,  in  those 
days,  if  I  may  wax  biographical  on  my  own  account, 
I  had  been  unlucky  enough  to  become  entangled 
in  ultra-democratic  journalism  and  to  have  attained 
a  vivid  insight  into  the  ethics  of  labour  leaders  and 
trade  unions,  which  will  last  me  for  the  remainder 
of  my  pilgrimage  in  this  vale  of  tears.  Our 
venture  in  fools'  journalism — the  later  develop- 
ments of  which  were  forced  upon  us — cost  my 
father  and  myself  a  large  slice  of  our  small  capital 
— it  is  often  the  fate  of  the  honest  gentleman  to 
pay  for  the  quarrels  of  labour  with  the  more  or  less 
imaginary  vampires  of  Mammon — but,  for  the 
moment,  I  was  supposed  to  be  fighting  against 
shipowners,  who,  in  those  days,  not  so  long  after 
Plimsoll's  time,  by  the  by,  were  probably  often 
not  all  that  they  should  be.     Hence,  I  was  afraid 


34  ERNEST  DOWSON 

that  I  might  appear  a  Larkinian  of  that  day  to 
the  Dowsons,  father  and  son.  They,  however, 
reassured  me. 

By  persons  of  less  than  bourgeois  descent,  by 
persons  who  are  ashamed  of  their  origin,  we  hear 
much  abuse  of  the  bourgeoisie.  Mr  Bernard  Shaw 
brings  the  idea  over  from  the  France  of  1848.  The 
ouvriers  of  1830,  1848  and  1871  were  writhing 
under  the  heel  of  fat  and  vulgar  epiciers,  very  vile 
and  grasping  people,  such  as  sit  at  the  receipt  of 
custom  in  Continental  hotels  to-day. 

But  the  Dowsons,  father  and  son,  perfectly 
well-bred,  exquisitely  polished,  genteel  in  the  good 
old  sense  of  a  word  which  it  has  been  in  the  interest 
of  many  to  suppress,  were  of  the  type  of  Victor 
Hugo's  old  gentleman,  the  grandfather  of  Marius 
in  "Les  Miserables,"  "qui  portait  sa  bourgeoisie 
comme  un  marquisat."  The  type  still  abounds  in 
provincial  France  to-day. 

\  Ernest  Dowson  appreciated  the  ancestral  trade 
half  humorously.  Mr  Arthur  Symons  need  not 
have  pitied  him  for  being  a  docker  in  those  early 
artless  days. 

We  went  out  and  looked  at  a  jolly  ship  in  the 
little  dry  dock,  which  was  two  hundred  and  eighty- 
seven  feet  long  by  eighty  wide  ;  the  depth  of  water 
*'  on  a  two  foot  six  inch  block  at  neap  tides  "  being 
two  fathoms. 

Dowson  the  decadent,  the  dreamer,  the  example 
of  all  that  was  terrible  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  cut  across  a  plank  and  was  aboard  before 


DOWSON  THE  DOCKER  35 

I  could  say  Jack  Robinson.  In  a  second  he 
looked  out  at  me  from  a  forward  porthole,  and 
explained  condescendingly,  but  with  excitement 
and  interest  in  his  voice : 

**  This  is  the  front  ■psiit  of  the  ship/' 

"  Of  course,"  I  replied. 

I  see  his  rather  pale  face  even  now,  framed  in 
the  dark  porthole,  which  he  would  have  called  a 
window. 

He  had  not  the  lank  hair  of  the  typical  poet, 
and  his  face  was  not  the  long  one  of  the  bards. 
His  hair,  a  dark  brown,  was  curly  and  wavy,  and 
his  eyes  and  face,  in  those  days,  without  being 
beautiful,  were  agreeable  and  animated.  He  had 
only  the  remotest  resemblance  to  Keats  :  he  was 
quite  individual.  His  dress,  too,  was  peculiar  to 
him.  He  wore,  I  fancy,  what  was  then  called  a 
pea-jacket,  dark  trousers  the  worse  for  wear,  and 
boots  that  arrested  the  attention  by  a  certain 
quaintness.  His  collars  were  of  the  stick-up  kind, 
not  high,  and  I  distinctly  remember  that  he 
turned  down  one  corner  more  than  the  other,  and 
that  the  collar  as  a  whole,  like  the  boots,  seemed 
moulded  into  folds  of  a  sympathetic  irregularity. 
He  probably  sported  a  black  butterfly  necktie, 
which  he  delighted  in  as  being  French.  It  was  of 
the  kind  which  you  can  buy  for  forty-five  centimes 
or  so,  and  it  was  fastened  by  a  thin  piece  of  elastic 
and  a  boot  button. 

I  walked  along  the  side  of  the  dock,  and  with 
incredible  speed,  as  of  a  lapwing,  he  was  at  the 


/ 


36  ERNEST  DOWSON 

stern,  and  looking  out  of  another  aperture  in  the 
dark  tarry  timbers  he  cried  : 

*'  And  this  is  the  back  part  of  the  ship." 

He  visited  other  parts  of  the  vessel,  and  illumin- 
ated me  on  their  uses  as  before .  Then ,  rejoining  me, 
he  confessed  ingenuously:  "Though  I'm  always 
here,  I've  never  learnt  the  proper  names  for 
things." 

**  Not  to  indulge  in  technicalities  is  the  hall- 
mark of  culture,"  I  remarked  sententiously. 
Sententiousness  used  to  please  him  in  those  early 
days,  and  it  was  only  later  on,  when  fatigue  became 
his  element,  that  he  began  to  dismiss  any  laborious 
sally  with  a  weary  nod  of  abstract  acquiescence. 

"  My  little  brother,"  he  said,  "  brings  parties 
of  boys  from  the  Forest  to  play  on  the  ships." 

How  one  envied  them. 

I  came  away  from  "  the  dock  "  delighted.  It 
was  all  so  jolly.  That  contact  with  reality — even 
if  they  are  unconscious  of  it — is  so  good  for  poets. 
They  should  smell  tar  and  hay  ;  they  should 
rejoice  in  the  open  air,  in  things,  in  sport  ! 

I  sat  down  and  wrote  a  Globe  "  Turnover," 
mainly  in  praise  of  this  dock  of  Dowson's  (21st  May 
1889).  The  "Turnover"  was  a  great  institution 
in  those  days.  There  were  said  to  be  three 
hundred  and  ten  briefless  barristers  in  the  Temple 
all  busy  writing  them. 

*' There  are  old-world  offices  in  existence  in 
London  even  now  which  breathe  a  placid  atmo- 


DOWSON  THE  DOCKER  37 

sphere  not  to  be  matched  among  the  turmoil  of 
the  outer  world. 

"  There  are  offices  among  the  docks,  on  the  shore 
of  murky  Thames,  which  should  be  full  of  inspira- 
tion to  some  at  least  of  their  inmates.  Wliere  the 
great  lock-gates  divide  the  dripping  shadows  of  the 
dry  dock  from  the  main  flood  of  the  river  stands  an 
old-fashioned  house  of  business.  There  are  no  tile- 
paved  passages,  no  lift,  no  smart  commissionaires 
here.  To  gain  admittance  to  the  sanctum  where 
our  friend  the  '  Dry  Docker  '  transacts  his  leisurely 
affairs  you  must  push  strenuously  through  a  heavy 
yard-gate,  mount  a  wooden  outside  staircase,  and 
knock  and  ring  as  though  you  were  at  the  door  of 
a  private  house.  The  rooms  within  once  gained, 
you  are  wafted  away  from  the  nineteenth  into  the 
eighteenth  century  at  once.  A  quaint  hospitable 
scent  of  grog  and  stale  tobacco  assaults  your 
nostrils  pleasantly.  Your  eyes  rest  on  comfortable 
ramshackle  desks  of  some  dark  old  wood,  placed 
so  that  the  writers  at  them  may  sit  in  arm-chairs 
and  look  askance  at  the  vistas  of  the  shining  grey 
water  outside — at  the  red  sails  of  the  slowly 
travelling  hay-barges,  and  the  dusky  spars  of 
innumerable  far-travelled  ships.  Under  your  very 
nose  is  the  figure-head,  a  smirking  Black-eyed 
Susan,  of  some  great  sailing-ship  which  has  been 
successfully  enticed  into  this  particular  dock,  with 
the  traditional  guinea  for  the  captain  to  buy  a  new 
*  beaver '  withal,  and  innumerable  drinks  to  boat- 
swain and  ship's  carpenter.    The  masts  and  spars 


38  ERNEST  DOWSON 

are  bare  of  all  canvas,  unless  we  count  the  jerseys 
and  ducks  which  flap  from  their  washing-line 
between  the  main  and  mizen  rigging.  The  decks 
are  untenanted  now,  save  by  the  cook's  black  boy 
and  the  master's  mate's  black  cat.  There  is  a 
sense  of  rest  in  the  air :  you  know  that  now  at 
any  rate  leviathans  are  taking  their  ease. 

*'  Over  there  a  bright  handful  of  fire  crackles  in 
the  fine  old  carved  fireplace.  The  fireplaces,  and 
especially  the  mantelshelves,  of  forgotten  east  end 
offices  are  often  worthy  of  the  most  exacting 
modern  art  furnisher,  and  this  one  is  no  exception 
to  the  rule.  Above  it  hang  elevations,  carefully 
traced  on  the  now-faded  parchment,  much  affected 
of  vanished  draughtsmen,  representing  the  hulls, 
and  sterns,  and  prows  of  antique  three-deckers. 
There  is  a  symmetry,  a  wealth  of  carven  and 
gilded  detail  about  the  old  ships  of  Nelson's  day 
wherewith  such  offices  as  these  seem  quite  in 
keeping.  The  maps  on  the  walls,  with  their  titles 
and  dedications  set  amid  profuse  scrollwork  and 
stereotyped  flourishes  of  penmanship,  are  as 
venerable  as  the  pictured  men-of-war.  This  one 
was  dedicated  '  to  the  gentlemen  of  New  Lloyd's  ' 
so  long  ago  as  1816.  It  is  a  map  of  the  world, 
and  it  represents  Greenland  intersected  with 
numerous  projected  canals,  all  of  which  are 
destined  to  afford  a  north-west  passage  to  China 
and  the  Indies.  Central  Africa,  especially  that 
part  of  it  which  Mr  Stanley  has  lately  traversed, 
is  void,  save  for  a  terrific  dragon  which  does  duty 


DOWSON  THE  DOCKER         39 

for  an  as  yet  undiscovered  Aruwimi  and  Upper 
Congo.  Australia  is  here  written  down  New 
Holland,  and  the  islands  and  seas  of  Japan 
are  strangely  mixed.  There  are  marvellously- 
contrived  corner  lockers  in  this  dreamful  retreat 
of  leisured  business,  and  when  the  captain  of  the 
ship  close  at  hand  comes  up  to  launch  a  complaint 
or  make  a  payment — for  his  vessel  is  '  going  out  ' 
to-night,  and  there  will  be  much  swearing  and 
opening  of  lock-gates  after  dark — the  cupboards 
are  opened,  and  cigars  and  liqueurs,  into  the 
importation  whereof  we  should  not  inquire  too 
closely,  are  produced  and  discussed  by  the  poor 
work-worn  plumitifs  and  their  guests." 

It  was  certainly  an  indiscretion  of  youth,  for 
one  should  not  make  copy  out  of  one's  friends' 
possessions  without  first  asking  their  leave. 

Again  I  came  back  to  the  dock  in  trepidation. 
The  elder  Mr  Dowson,  the  poet's  father,  rushed  at 
me  and  "  scragged  "  my  arm,  as  a  schoolboy  might. 

"  You  villain,  what  do  you  mean  by  describing 
my  dock  in  the  papers  ?  " 

Then  he  showed  me  a  great  pile  of  Globes  on  the 
top  of  an  old  bureau. 

"  I  give  one  to  everybody  who  comes  here/' 
he  was  so  kind  as  to  say. 

To  the  elder  Dowson,  that  delightful  man  of  an 
older  generation,  the  ancestral  dock  was  a  joy  and 
a  pride.  It  should  have  furnished  Ernest,  the  son, 
with  the  tapestries  he  lacked.     But  he  was  a  poet 


40  ERNEST  DOWSON 

of  one  landscape  and  of  static  time,  like  so  many 
singers,  notably  perhaps  old  Frederick  Tennyson, 
whose  works  were  reprinted  in  the  autumn  of  1913. 
Max  Nordau  would  have  said  of  dear  Ernest 
Dowson  that  his  sensations  were  of  the  decadent 
order,  and  that  he  was  subjective  because  he  was 
unaware  of  the  objective.     Who  knows  ? 

Mr  Dowson,  senior,  had  been  one  longish  voyage 
out  of  the  dock,  to  the  Azores,  I  think.  It  had 
lasted  six  weeks.  As  a  young  man  he  had  fitted 
out  a  barge  like  a  prehistoric  house-boat,  in  which 
the  staff  of  Punch,  Sir  F.  (then  Mr)  Burnand  among 
them,  and  other  celebrities,  including  the  great 
Swinburne  himself,  had  cruised  about  in  the  ofhng 
of  the  dock,  putting  in  at  home  from  time  to  time, 
to  take  in  supplies.  He  told  me  this  and  much 
else  in  many  interviews.  He  confessed  to  me  once 
at  his  own  house  that  he  was  rather  afraid  of  the 
younger  generation,  and  of  Ernest  in  particular. 

Twice  I  visited  father,  mother  and  son  at  their 
home  in  the  outskirts  of  Epping  Forest.  A 
pleasant  memory  remains  of  a  dark  house, 
where  hospitality  flourished,  and  in  a  study,  the 
sanctum  of  father  and  son,  there  was  an  arm-chair 
with  prodigiously  long  arms.  In  the  drawing- 
room  was  the  portrait  by  Wills  of  the  poet  as  a 
little  child. 

We  left  the  curious  suburb  where  the  Dowsons 
then  lived  close  to  the  high  walls  of  a  vast  garden, 
sepulchral  with  ancient  evergreens,  where  a  family 
of  old  Quaker  ladies  were  being  buried  at  intervals 


DOWSON  THE  DOCKER  41 

in  a  strange  private  mausoleum.  To  a  man  whose 
life  has  been  spent  mainly  in  the  south  of  England 
everything  to  the  north  of  the  Thames,  and  in  the 
eastern  counties,  seems  to  contain  an  element  of 
the  outlandish. 

In  the  course  of  a  rambling  walk  in  the  sight 
of  scattered  offshoot  groves  of  Epping  Forest  we 
sighted  long  lines  of  funerals,  scudding  in  the 
direction  of  Walthamstow.  We  counted  three  or 
four  moodily  and  prophetically  competing ! 


MARGINALIA 

Writing  under  two  assumed  names,  of  which  I 
dare  only  quote  one — '*  Anatole  de  Montmartre  " — 
he  joined  with  me  and  my  then  fellow-sufferer  in 
lodgings  and  lifelong  friend,  Mr  Frank  W.  Walton, 
now  Librarian  of  King's  College,  London,  in 
annotating  a  volume  of  "  The  African  Farm,"  by 
Olive  Schreiner.  This  was  well  before  1890.  We 
wrote  as  German  commentators  of  the  classics, 
a  race  that  had  bothered  us  very  much  both  at 
Tonbridge  and  Oxford,  and  we  were  abusive  of 
one  another  and  studiedly  pedantic,  as  dear  old 
commentators  should  be,  but  M.  de  Montmartre 
annotated  quite  gravely — I  feel  sure  of  that.  He 
belied  his  pseudonym,  and  set  down  his  own  views 
seriously  and  with  care.  They  are  of  course 
fragmentary,  but  they  are  remarkable  for  a  man 
of  twenty  one  or  two,  and  I  remember  they  struck 
me  at  the  time  as  singularly  mature. 

The  German  commentators,  who  rejoiced  in  the 
two  principal  names  of  Schnutzius  and  Hans 
Tiibner,  were  somewhat  annoyed  by  De  Mont- 
martre's  refusal  to  play  the  game  of  solemn 
frivolity,  but  now  his  refusal  has  resulted  in  my 
still  possessing  a  little  anthology  of  his  pencil 
marginalia,  which  is  full  of  character  and  a  curious 

42 


MARGINALIA  43 

sidelight  on  his  mind  in  1888  and  later,  though  it 
can  in  no  sense  be  said  to  synthesise  "a  philosophy." 

Dowson  introduces  himself  by  declaring  that  his 
most  decadent  friends  regard  him  as  somewhat 
of  a  heretic.  Yet  he  is  quite  decadent  in  his  first 
utterance,  when  he  writes :  "  The  conclusion  of  the 
whole  matter,"  as  comment  on  one  of  Miss  Olive 
Schreiner's  mottoes:  "A  striving  and  a  striving 
and  an  ending  in  nothing." 

Next  we  find  him  saying  that  some  of  the  accom- 
plished writer's  phrases  are  "  symbolic  of  the 
entire  inefficacy  of  all  spiritual,  supernatural  help 
in  one's  sorest  need  " — surely  a  strange  phrase 
from  a  future  convert  to  faith.  And  so  is  this 
in  allusion  to  the  passage  in  the  text  of  the  novel — 
"  When  the  little  weary  lamb  we  drive  home  drags 
its  feet,  we  seize  on  it,  and  carry  it  with  its  head 
against  our  face.  His  little  lamb  !  "  "  By  a 
similar  process,"  says  Ernest  Dowson,  "  did  the 
religious  sentimental  man  invent  the  Immaculate 
Conception.  Cf.  Zola's  '  Faute  de  I'Abbe  Mouret,' 
Book  I."  Now,  as  every  comparative  religionist 
knows,  nothing  of  that  kind  was  ever  invented  by 
any  man.     It  grew. 

Later  on  the  same  page  he  cries :  *'  Helas,  helas, 
for  the  utter  materialism  of  the  feminine  nature." 
Then  comes  a  dictum  he  was  fond  of  quoting: 
"  The  first  theologic  maxim  which  ever  profoundly 
impressed  me  was  Stendhal's  "  La  seule  chose  qui 
excuse  Dieu  c'est  qu'il  n'existe  pas" — a  facile 
blasphemy  comparable  to  a  famous  present-day 


44  ERNEST  DOWSON 

philosopher's  allusion  to  the  bankruptcy  of  the 
Eternal,  which  he  reserved  for  the  occasion  when 
he  first  made  his  appearance  as  a  preacher  in  a 
Nonconformist  pulpit. 

When  Schnutzius  and  Tiibner  were  debating  the 
authoress's  dicta  as  to  "  wickedness  "  he  cries : 
**  Nay,  O  Schnutz  (or  Tiibner),  why  decide  .  .  . 
at  all  ?  "  But  he  is  himself  decisive.  ''  Whether 
a  man  believes  in  a  human-like  God  or  no  is  a 
small  thing,"  says  Olive  Schreiner.  And  Dowson  : 
*'This  is  a  profound  saying.  Theism,  Pantheism, 
Christianity,  Positivism — they  lie  so  close  together 
that  it  is  like  splitting  hairs  to  consider  them  apart. 
The  vital  issue  is  between  optimism  and  pessimism." 
Again,  "  ?  Nature  =  God  =  Infinite  Evil — so  to 
the  pessimist  this  solatium  is  denied."  This  in 
allusion  to  some  optimist  passage. 

"  Ere  our  death-day.  Faith,  I  think,  does  pass, 
and  Love,  but  Knowledge  abideth.  Let  us  seek 
Knowledge.  At  least  let  us  shun  emotion  as 
we  would  hell,  for  which  it  is  a  synonym.  Let  us 
live  in  ourselves  and  for  ourselves.  A  reasonable 
self-love,  without  passion  or  thought  of  others, 
and  with  the  end  of  self-culture  before  us,  is  better 
than  a  million  emotions." 

"  Corollary — let  us  shun  emotion  and  seek 
knowledge  only."  And  again,  near  the  end  of  the 
book :  "  O.  S.  seems  to  admit  that  the  ideal  State 
is  to  be  without  hate,  or  love,  or  hope,  or  fear,  or 
desire — passionless . ' ' 

Of  annihilation  he  writes  as  of  "  an  everlasting 


MARGINALIA  45 

conscious  inanition."  He  apparently  quotes  a 
phrase,  and  one  asks  :  "  If  there  be  consciousness, 
how  can  there  be  annihilation  ?  "  "  Surely,"  he 
says,  "  annihilation  is  not  horrible,"  though  hell 
and  heaven  are  horrible  conceptions. 

**  There  must  be  a  Hereafter  because  man  longs 
for  it"  (Schreiner). 

"  A  very  weak  argument.  A  man  may  long  for 
water  in  Sahara,  but  he  doesn't  always  get  it  " 
(E.  D.). 

*'  I  object  most  strongly  to  a  personal  immor- 
tality." 

"  Immortality  !  Wretched  ideal.  Infinite  ennui 
— I  die  at  the  thought." 

Of  a  character  in  the  *'  African  Farm,"  who 
was  in  the  habit  of  locking  himself  up  in  his  room 
with  books  and  a  bottle  of  brandy,  of  which  he 
preferred  the  latter,  Dowson  says  :  ''  Why  not  ? 
It  is  the  next  best  philosophy  to  suicide  or  fakir- 
like asceticism — the  latter  best  of  all — only,  alas ! 
the  flesh  is  weak,  weak." 

*'  Self -contempt  is  respectable.  Because  we 
strike  a  compromise  with  a  loathsome  existence 
and  take  spleenfully  the  few  poor  gifts  of  the  gods, 
brandy,  etc.,  shall  Schnutz  join  with  Eliza  Cook  " 
— one  of  our  doubles — "  and  call  us  mere  beasts  ?  " 
De  Montmartre  refers  him  to  his  approaching 
volume,  "  Sacrements  du  Degout."  3  fr.  50 
(Lemaire)  . 

Miss  Schreiner  makes  one  of  her  characters 
suppose   that,  if  wine,    philosophy  and  women 


46  ERNEST  DOWSON 

keep  the  dream  of  life  from  becoming  a  nightmare, 
so  much  the  better. 

"  They  at  least,  women,"  cries  Ernest  Dowson, 
of  course  always  in  his  assumed  character,  "  are 
hardly  fit  even  for  that.  They  make  it  a  worse 
nightmare  than  ever." 

Of  a  passage  which  he  does  not  like  he  cries  : 
"  Typical  inherent  bassesse  in  woman's  nature — 
the  brutal  method,  the  only  method  with  woman — 
e.g.  the  perverse  pleasure  (to  be  observed  in  a 
hundred  cases)  with  which  a  woman  sets  herself 
to  degrade  and  obliterate  the  feminine  ideal  if  she 
comes  across  a  man  with  any  faith  in  it." 

Manifestly  here  is  the  timid  young  male  spirit 
clothing  itself  in  the  defensive  garment  of  mis- 
ogyny. Most  young  poets  have  passed  through 
that  phase. 

**  Men,"  says  Olive  Schreiner,  "  are  like  the 
earth  and  we  are  the  moon  ;  we  turn  always  one 
side  to  them,  and  they  think  there  is  no  other, 
because  they  don't  see  it — but  there  is." 

"  And  the  reverse  instance  is  as  true,"  follows 
Dowson 's  comment — "  only  women  don't  believe 
we  have  another  side  than  the  obvious  one,  even 
when  we  show  it." 

At  the  end  of  "  Waldo's  Stranger  "  he  gathers 
regretfully  that  his  fellow-commentators  do  not 
share  his  admiration  for  this  most  striking  chapter 
(chapter  ii.,  part  ii.). 

He  returns  to  his  misogyny  and  we  must 
remember  that  he  is  still  very  young. 


MARGINALIA  47 

He  believes,  perhaps  with  his  tongue  in  his 
cheek,  *'  that  women  are  several  incarnations 
behind  men  (as  cats  are  behind  dogs),  and  that 
they  entirely  lack  a  certain  spiritual  principle 
which  exists  even  in  the  most  bestial  man." 

"  L3mdall  is  a  charming,  pathetic,  typical 
figure,  typical  of  the  nineteenth  century,  with 
its  spleen,  its  self -consciousness,  its  fine  ideals  and 
its  perpetual  falling  between  them,  its  unrest 
and  its  dominant  note  of  ineffectuality,  of  sensu- 
ality which  it  cannot  escape  from  nor  frankly 
accept,  but  can  simply  temporise  with  and 
despise." 

The  devil,  who  sends  children,  according  to  a 
character  in  the  novel,  is,  according  to  Ernest 
Dowson,  "  *  the  Evil  Will  which  baits  its  trap  with 
the  illusion  Love  and  scatters  the  illusion  to  the 
winds  when  its  purpose  is  fulfilled.'  Cf.  Schopen- 
hauer's chapter  on  Sex  and  Desire.  *  L'hamme9on 
est  evident,  et  neamoins  on  y  a  mordu,  on  y 
mo rdra  tou jours '  "  (Renan). 

"  Some  say  the  Devil  carried  the  seed  from  hell, 
and  planted  it  on  the  earth  to  plague  men  and 
make  them  sin"  (Schreiner). 

*'  A  theological  and  figurative  expression  of  my 
own  theory  "  (Dowson). 

'' '  Se  sacrifier  a  ses  passions  !  passe.  Mais 
a  des  passions  qu'on  n'a  pas !  Triste  XIX^ 
Siecle  !  '  "     (Stendhal,  quoted  thus  by  D.). 

**  Actually  I  doubt  if  passion  ever  did  or  could 
elevate  a  commonplace  man  to  this  extent "  (in 


48  ERNEST  DOWSON 

reference  to  the  episode  of  Gregory  turning  nurse) . 
"  Passion  is  waste — takes  away  from  a  man's 
stability,  his  self-centralization  :  its  action  on 
general  culture,  sestheticism,  philosophy,  many- 
sidedness,  all  that  makes  life  endurable,  is  ruinous. 
It  fastens  on  life  like  a  cancer." 

"  Did  Lyndall  finally  see  passion,  with  Stendhal, 
as  a  lottery,  '  bonheur  cherche  par  des  fous, 
duperie  certaine  '  ?  " 

Summing  up,  Ernest  Dowson  finds  that  his  two 
chief  collaborators  are  hopelessly  tainted  with 
sentimentalism.  As  Anatole  de  Montmartre,  "  he 
is  more  often  in  sympathy  with  Blotzius,  and 
will  be  happy  to  revile  a  most  abominable  world 
with  him  over  an  absinthe  at  any  time.  Strangely 
enough,  with  Miss  E.  Cook  he  is  more  often  d' accord 
than  he  would  have  believed.  .  .  .  From  an 
entirely  different  point  of  view  they  deduce 
precisely  the  same  practical  corollary.  For 
Schnutz,  [De  Montmartre]  fears  that  only  a  deeper 
study  of  Schopenhauer  and  an  adhesion  to  some 
of  the  tenets  of  Plato,  will  ever  conduct  him  to 
Nirvana.  In  conclusion  he  has  a  deep  distrust  of 
the  flowers  that  grow  in  the  Garden  of  Propertius. 
And  the  fruit  of  that  garden  he  avows  to  be  Dead 
Sea  Apples,  whereof,  if  a  man  eats,  he  shall  surely 
die." 

Strange,  is  it  not,  to  read  all  this  ?  Much  of  it 
is  trite  and  trivial  enough.  Young  Oxford  of  the 
eighties  was  pessimistic  :  it  affected,  here  and 
there,  to  worship  Buddha,  and  it  read  its  Schopen- 


MARGINALIA  49 

hauer  and  much  else.     And  Ernest  Dowson  read 
his  Stendhal. 

But,  conversely,  much  more  of  this  is  extremely 
interesting.  As  I  write,  at  Christmas  time  1913, 
a  few  weeks  before  the  anniversary  of  my  friend's 
death  nearly  fourteen  years  ago,  the  programme 
of  last  Sunday's  Queen's  Hall  Concert  comes  to 
hand.  One  of  the  pieces  was  Granville  Bantock's 
"  Comedy  Overture,"  "  The  Pierrot  of  the 
Minute,"  of  which  the  libretto  is  Ernest  Dowson's. 
In  giving  some  account  of  "  the  unfortunate  poet," 
Mrs  Rosa  Newmarch  quotes  Mr  Arthur  Symons' 
characterisation  of  Dowson's  art.  "  He  had  the 
pure  lyric  gift,  unweighted  or  unballasted  by  any  ' 
other  quality  of  mind  or  emotion." 

I  have  ventured  to  italicise.     Yet  here,  suiely, 
and    in    some    preceding    pages,    we    have    had    f 
evidences  of  *'  quality  of  mind,"  and  of  emotion    j 
we  shall  have  evidence  later  on.     Emotion  ? — ^his    j 
life  was  an  agony  of  emotion  !  j 

To  me,  who  knew  a  few  of  the  facts  and  am 
guessing  others  in  sorrowful  retrospect,  the  miracle 
of  Ernest  Dowson  was  his  conversion — in  every 
sense  of  that  word. 

Here  is  a  lurid,  woman-hating  sceptic,  who,  in 
a  year  or  two,  becomes  a  convert  to  Rome,  believes, 
takes  the  significance  of  gems  seriously,  falls  in 
love !  J 

Perhaps,  indeed,  the  best  reason  for  Ernest 
Dowson's  early   production   of   exquisite   poetry 


50  ERNEST  DOWSON 

was  this — ^that  he  was  preparing  to  fall  in  love. 
He  fell  in  love,  or  fancied  that  he  did.  His  love- 
affair  was,  it  struck  me  from  the  first,  a  matter  of 
imagination,  or  of  common  form,  which  ended  by 
being  a  torture.     I  cannot  enter  into  it. 

We  do  not,  I  trust,  even  in  memoirs,  desecrate 
the  arcana  of  others,  the  sanctities  which,  in  given 
cases,  we  cannot  at  all  understand.  Had  my 
beloved  friend  lived  fifty  years  ago,  instead  of 
fifteen,  I  might,  perhaps,  as  an  octogenarian,  have 
attempted  an  analysis  of  his  case,  into  the  secret  of 
which  he  affectionately  inducted  me  perhaps  more 
than  anyone  else  now  living.  As  it  is,  I  decide  to 
pass  it  over. 

Yet  the  poet's  love  affair,  far  more  than  his 
conversion  to  Rome,  is  the  well-spring  of  his 
spirit  in  the  letters  which  follow. 

In  1892  the  aimless  young  fellow,  full  of  dread- 
ful views  on  marriage  and  the  rest,  has  become 
a  chastened  lover,  just  as,  at  Missolonghi,  the 
coxcomb  Byron  became  a  hero. 

Alas !  the  reticence,  which  is  perhaps  the  quint- 
essence of  criticism  and  biography,  compels  me  to 
omit  passages,  nay  to  suppress  whole  letters  of 
great  beauty,  which  some  ruthless  hand  may  give 
to  the  Press  a  century  hence.  But  omission  is 
what  he  would  have  desired.  He  ends  one  notable 
letter  with  the  word  "  tacendum,"  sometimes  the 
kindliest  watchword  in  reminiscences. 

Could  the  daringly  unconventional  love  affairs 
of  two  young  poets,  both  constitutionally  timid, 


MARGINALIA  51 

be  made  public  and  set  out  in  detail — could  love 
be  made  the  clue  to  his  changed  mood,  these  letters 
would  be  fully  explanatory  of  themselves.  As  it 
is,  I  shall  have  to  base  them  on  mystery  and  thus 
allow  them  to  blossom  the  more  for  those  who 
read  reverently  between  the  lines. 


ON   RE-PRINTING   A   POET'S   LETTERS 

Vagrant  and  fragrant  as  June's  midnight  breeze. 
Transient  as  a  child's  sorrow,  yet  as  true. 
Faint  as  shell-murmurs  of  forgotten  seas. 
These  phrases  writ  by  you  ! 

Why  print  them  ?     Wherefore  not,  since  they  assert 
Your  spirit's  charm,  and  bring  to  some  again 
Your  high  and  musing  features  still  unhurt. 
Still  untransformed  by  pain  ? 

Since,  too,  the  tongue  of  Cavil  wags,  why  not 
Draw  back  your  very  soul  through  Death's  dark  doors. 
And  from  the  mirror  of  the  Present  blot 
An  image  nowise  yours  ? 

V.  P. 


52 


THE  LETTERS  1 

I 

Almost  my  first  letter  from  him  was  dated  from 
15  Bristol  Gardens,  Maida  Hill.  It  may  date  from 
1891  or  early  in  1892. 

"  Caro  Mio, — Can  you  come  and  have  supper 
with  us  here,  next  Sunday  about  8  ?  There  is  a 
certain  W — d  P — k,  of  treasure  hunt  fame,  of 
Oxford  and  of  Allahabad  to  be  with  us,  whom  my 
father  thinks  you  might  care  to  meet.  .  .  .  There 
is  much  to  be  said.  I  am  down  in  Gehenna  ;  I 
hope  you  are  up  in  the  clouds.  .  .  .  From  every 
point  of  view  this  is  a  tedious  world,  unhappily 
rendered  so  perhaps,  more  than  it  need  be,  by 
foolish  conventionalities  and  proprieties  of  one's 
relations  and  friends  ;  and  by  the  entire  lack  of 
charity  in  one's  scandal-loving  acquaintance.     No 

more.     Tuissimus, 

*'  (Signed)  Ernest  Dowson." 

His  letters  are  rarely  dated,  and  it  has  not  been 
easy  to  place  them.  The  following  one,  however, 
is  of  an  early  period.     The  next  belongs  to  the  time 

^  These  are  reprinted  almost  exactly  as  written,  the  French 
being  non- italicised. 

53 


54  ERNEST  DOWSON 

of  the  publication  of  the  "  Book  of  the  Rhymers' 
Club,"  early  in  1892. 

He  writes  from  15  Bristol  Gardens : 

"  Cher  Vieux, — What  must  you  think  of  me  ? 
It  must  be  three  weeks  since  I  wrote  you  a  ream  of 
spleen,  having  incidentally  to  say  how  grieved  I 
was  not  to  be  able  to  join  you  and  Hillier  on  a 
certain  Sunday.  And,  a  day  or  two  ago,  I  found 
I  had  posted  the  letter  in  a  pocket  !  .  .  .  May  we 
meet  soon  in  Valhalla  at  anyrate.  for  after  Gotter- 
dammerung  there  is  haply  Valhalla,  and  I  think 
this  is  the  twilight  of  the  gods  :  but  what  I  mean 
exactly,  I  could  put  more  precisely  in  a  sonnet, 
which  might  be  found  obscure.  What  are  you 
doing  ?  If  you  have  a  spare  moment,  write  to 
me  ;  your  letters  appeal  to  my  t6  n  r^v  elvat  more 
than  anything :  or  what  are  you  not  doing  ? 
which  is  generally  the  most  important  form  of 
action  !  I  do  nothing,  live  in  a  sort  of  dream, 
of  nothing  :  and  I  have  never  before  lived  to  such 
an  exhausting  extent.  To  find  an  irrational 
residuum  in  oneself,  eluding  one's  last  analysis,  is 
r  by  some  strange  freak  reasonably  a  consolation. 
Does  not  a  great,  personal  passion  become  a  whole 
metaphysic  ?  At  least  an  abstract  metaphysical 
notion,  or  a  sacrament,  or  a  mystery,  or  a  miracle, 
in  certain  lights,  becomes  more  credible  than  any 
material  thing  or  appearance,  one's  mere  going 
or  doing,  or  talk  or  juxtaposition  or  the  death  one 
will  die. 


THE  LETTERS  55 

"  But  I  don't  want  to  send  you  an  essay  on 
the  absolute,  and  will  conclude  with  a  prayer  for 
forgiveness,  for  these  random  impressions.  But 
I  wanted  to  write  a  word  to  you  ;  and  this  by  the 
way,  because  of  all  men  I  know  you  are  most 
likely  to  find  me  intelligible.  Though  I  have 
done,  nor  said,  nor  suffered  anything  tangible 
since  I  last  saw  or  wrote  to  you,  I  write  as  an 
illuminato :  I  seem  to  have  seen  mysteries,  and 
if  I  fail  to  be  explicit,  it  is  because  my  eyes 
are  dazzled. 

"  I  have  not  seen  anyone  very  lately — ^until  a 
few  days  ago,  that  is — ^not  so  much  for  any  ailment 
as  for  a  great  lack  of  energy  which  has  come  over 
me."     Referring  to  a  conversation  with  Lionel 
Johnson  he  continues  :  ''  I  confess,  however,  that 
I  have  long  passed  the  point  at  which  one  is 
seriously  moved  by  hostile  criticism  of  anybody 
in  these  questions  or  can  feel  any  more  than  a 
tolerant  contempt  for  the  point  of  view  from  which 
it  is  uttered.     To  take  the  world  so  seriously  !  \ 
Enfin  c'est  trop  bete.     God  or  the  Flesh  or  the,; 
Devil — an  artist  may  be  in  bondage  to  any  one  or  x 
other  or  all  of  these  Powers  and  retain  his  self-  / 
respect — but  the  world  mustn't,  positively  must 
not  exist  for  him — or  so  much  the  worse  for  his  art.  ^ 
Cher  Poete  je  vous  embrasse.     My  mother  has 
been  very  ill,  is  still  unaccountably  weak  ;   after 
six  weeks  of  the  influenza  with  complications  she 
can  still  scarcely  walk  across  the  room.     These 


56  ERNEST  DOWSON 

are  parlous  times.  Would  God  we  were  all  in 
Samoa,  with  others.  The  Rhymers'  Rhymes  are 
out :  and  a  copy  for  each  poem  of  every  con- 
tributor is  at  our  disposal." 

Bridge  Dock, 

LiMEHOUSE,   E. 

"  Carissime, — ^Yes  :  there  is  a  copy  of  the  Book 
of  Rhymes  for  each  poem,  which  will  mean,  will  it 
not,  that  there  are  five  awaiting  you  somewhere. 
The  person  to  apply  to,  I  believe,  is  not  Elkin 
Mathews,  but  Greene  of  Pembroke  Gardens, 
unless  perhaps  the  two  advance  copies  which  were 
brought  to  each  contributor,  to  the  Cheshire,  on 
the  last  meeting,  and  which  are  all  I  have  at 
present,  may  have  been  handed  on  to  Johnson 
to  be  forwarded  to  you. 

"  The  book  is  very  good — better  than  I  expected, 
although  the  binding  leaves  much  to  be  desired. 
And  I  still  hold,  that  certain  rejections  amongst 
your  poems  are  at  least  as  charming  as  certain  of 
the  selected. 

"  Your  letter  surprises  me,  yes  !  it  certainly 
surprises  me." 

Here  follows  a  lecture  from  Lionel  Johnson, 
ending,  "  impracticable,  and  foolish,  and  irrespon- 
sible. As  you  say,  however,  what  does  it  matter  ? 
— ^since  to-morrow  one  dies  !  The  criticisms  of 
one's  friends — '  rumores  senum  severiorum  ' — 
allons  done  !     No — 


THE  LETTERS  57 

•-  Non  ego  nunc  tristes  vereor,  mea  Cynthia,  manes, 
Nee  moror  extremo  debita  fata  rogo  : 
Sed  ne  forte  tuo  careat  mihi  funus  amore. 
Hie  timor  est  ipsis  durior  exequiis." 

These,  the  opening  lines  of  Elegy  XIX.,  Book  L, 
of  Propertius,  may  be  roughly  Englished  : 

--  Sweet  one,  I  fear  not  now  the  ghostly  state, 
Nor  would  I  hinder  what  I  owe  to  fate  ! 
But  lest  thy  love  desert  me  on  my  pyre, 
-Tis  this  I  fear  more  than  the  funeral  fire  !'' 

Ernest  Dowson  loved  his  Propertius,  and  the 
same  may  be  said  of  Goethe,  who  never  read  the 
Elegies  "  ohne  eine  Erschiitterung/'  One  wonders 
where  and  when  the  poets  read.  There  is  a 
singular,  a  poignant  parallelism  between  the  great 
and  prolonged  cri  du  cceur  of  the  old  Roman  and 
the  modern's  sorrowful  lament,  as  expressed,  for 
instance,  in  his  Cynara  poem,  ^  the  boldness  of 
which  is  august  with  the  spirit  of  antiquity,  as 
though  the  pagan  had  passed  into  and  inspired  the 
unhappy  lad  of  the  day  before  yesterday.  The 
grave  people,  doubtless  not  readers  of  the  classics, 
who  find  much  to  shock  them  in  this  poem,  must 
bear  in  mind  the  possibility  of  these  transmigra- 
tions of  spirit,  or,  an  you  will,  survivals.  And  let 
them  turn,  too,  to  the  older  master  and,  among  his 
trivialities  and  his  sensuousness,  experience  their 

^"Cynara"  was  suggested  to  Dowson  by  the  Cinara  of 
Horace,  celebrated  in  Book  IV.  of  the  Odes,  and  doubtless 
an  actual  woman  unlike  Lalage  and  others.  See  Carm. 
Lib.  IV.,  i.,  11.  3-4.  Horace  suggested,  but  Propertius 
inspired. 


r 


58  ERNEST  DOWSON 

Erschiltterung  when  they  light  on  such  splendid 
passages,  so  thrilled  with  the  pure  religion  of  the 
lover,  as  this  : — 

'•  Tu  mihi  sola  domus,  tu,  Cynthia,  sola  parentes, 
Omnia  tu  nostrae  tempora  laetitiae. 
Seu  tristis  veniam,  seu  contra  laetus  amicis  : 
Quicquid  ero,  dicam,  Cynthia  causa  fuit.'' 

-'  You  are  my  home  ancestral  :  Cynthia,  you 
Are  as  a  father  and  a  mother  to  me. 
And  every  hour  of  joy  that  I  ensue 
Is  Cynthia.     If  with  thoughts  that  half  undo  me 
I  walk,  or  if  with  smiles  my  friends  I  meet  : 
Whate'er  I  shall  become,  I'll  say, — '  My  sweet 
Was  cause  thereof.'  "- 

The  English  will  not  do  at  all.  Either,  with 
Keats,  one  introduces  an  Elizabethan  element  into 
an  imitation  of  the  ancient  manner,  or  an  element  of 
humour,  of  triviality.  The  translator  is  a  traducer 
in  any  case.  He  cannot  grapple  with  the  terseness 
of  a  tombstone  text.  I  remember,  in  horrible  Fleet 
Street  days — Fleet  Street  is,  of  course,  quite 
different  now — shortly  before  Dowson's  letter 
was  written  to  me,  a  poor  old  Polish  prince  of 
an  extreme  antiquity  of  race  being  roared  to 
at  intervals,  as  thus  :  '*  There's  nothing  in  French 
that  can't  be  put  in  fewer  words  in  honest 
English !  Put  that  in  your  pipe  and  smoke  it, 
Smithius  !  " 

Smithius  was  the  poor  old  prince's  Fleet  Street 
incognito.     He  spoke  French  when  not  speaking 


THE  LETTERS  59 

broken  English  :  he  had  been  one  of  Napoleon 
III/s  secretaries  with  Alphonse  Daudet. 

But  this  is  not  true.  French  and  Latin  are 
monumentally  terse  just  where  English  is  not, 
and  vice  versa.  It  was  left  to  Ernest  Dowson  to 
reproduce  something  of  the  Latin  brevity  and 
clarity  in  his  verse.  I  fancy  that  he  consciously 
strove  after  that.  We  strive  for  nothing  now  but 
to  be  queer,  and,  as  there  are  only  a  limited 
number  of  permutations  and  combinations  in  the 
algebra  of  ideas,  we  have  sometimes  to  turn  aside 
and  be  merely  insane.  To  insanity,  delirium 
and  mysticism  vast  unmapped  spaces  are  open. 

I  return  to  the  letter.  It  is  impossible  to  quote 
what  Lionel  Johnson  said,  for  here  we  should 
be  treading  on  the  ground  which  is  forbidden. 
Poor  Johnson,  who  was  so  fond  of  saying, 
half  humorously :  "  Respectability  is  the  best 
policy  "  ! 

The  "  to-morrow  one  dies  "  phrase  recurred 
constantly  in  Dowson 's  talk.  "  Aprbs  nous  le 
diluge  "  was  almost  his  motto.  The  young  men 
of  the  Decadence  were  for  ever  acting  and  speaking 
as  though  after  their  time  all  would  be  chaos,  and 
yet  that  period  is  twenty  years  ago,  and  they  are 
many  of  them  dead,  and  everything  goes  on  as 
usual.  There  is  the  same  crush  of  traffic  outside 
the  Bank  of  England,  as  Matthew  Arnold 
prophesied  to  the  old  gentlemen  that  there 
would  be  if  the  old  gentlemen  were  to  perish  on 
a  sudden. 


6o  ERNEST  DOWSON 

The  letter  ends : 

"  Pardon  these  incoherencies  and  accept  my 
gratitude  for  your  charming  sympathy.  Tout  a 
toi, 

"  (Signed)  Ernest  Dowson. 

"PS. — ^The  latest  Rhymer  is  one  Barlas,i  a 
charming  poet  and  anarchist,  who  was  lately  run 
in  for  shooting  the  House  of  Commons.  And  the 
latest  news — ^that  Gray,  of  whom  I  am  seeing  a 
good  deal  just  at  present,  pursues  the  '  Star  '  for 
a  libel  asserting  him  to  be  *the  original  Dorian 
of  that  name.'     This  will  be  droll." 

Discussing  the  first  "  Book  of  the  Rliymers' 
Club  "  in  February  1892  he  says  : 

*'  I  am  amused  to  find  that  my  cursory  acquaint- 
ance with  the  Anthology  of  Anthologies  has  made 
such  a  deep  impression  on  my  manner — or  can  it 
be  that  my  reviewer  does  not  know  what  the  Gr. 
Anthology  is  about  ? 

"  I  didn't  go  to  the  Rhymers  last  night,  nor  to  the 
last  meeting  but  one,  chiefly  because  the  meetings 
were  in  inaccessible  places  and  the  night  was  cold, 
and  partly  because  I  was  in  a  condition  too  Ijnrical 
even  for  the  society  of  poets.  So  I  have  not  run 
across  Greene ;  but  you  will  be  glad  to  hear  that 
the  Edition  is  entirely  exhausted.  ...  In  effect 

From  T^e  Times  obituary,  August  1914. — "On  the  15th 
inst.,  at  Glasgow,  John  Evelyn  Barlas,  B.A.,  New  College, 
Oxford  ('  Evelyn  Douglas  '),  aged  54.*' 


THE  LETTERS  6i 

I  am  become  far  too  absorb  to  do  anything  but 

sit,  in  ,  and  gather  the  exquisite  moments. 

For — to  quote  mes  derniers  : — 

**  *  The  wisdom  of  the  world  said  unto  me.'  -- 

Here  follows  the  MS.  of  his  "  Sapientia  Lunae," 
which  will  be  found  at  p.  50  of  **  Verses." 

In  allusion  to  Professor  Image's  kindly  and 
dignified  notice  of  the  Rhymers'  Book  he  adds  : 

"  P.S. — Dear  Image !  How  charming  his 
notice  is." 

"  Bridge  Dock,  Limehouse. 
"  May  19,  1S92. 
"  I  myself  have  had  one  of  the  worst  rheums 
within  my  memory." 

Referring  again  to  the  Rhymers'  Club  meetings 
he  says : 

*'  It  is  ages  since  I  have  managed  to  go  to 
one  ;  as  a  rule  now  I  am  too  chronically  irritated 
to  go  anywhere,  except  at  rare,  precarious  intervals 
when  there  happens  to  be  nowhere  to  go,  and 
nothing  to  do.  I  am  making  rhymes  in  the 
meantime  and  trying  to  write  a  short  story.  Is 
your  Muse  fertile  just  now  ?  " 

The  mention  of  the  death  of  Tennyson,  which 
occurred  on  6th  October  1892,  dates  the  next 
letter.  Ernest  Dowson  had,  at  that  time,  perhaps 
already  begun  to  pay  his  customary  week-end 
visits  to  us  at  Blackheath,  where  my  wife  and  I 


62  ERNEST  DOWSON 

lived  after  our  marriage  in  August  1892.  He 
might  well  have  been  with  us  at  Haslemere  in  the 
autumn  of  that  year,  when  my  mother  and  I 
caught  our  only  glimpse  of  her  idol,  the  august 
old  Laureate,  as  he  took  his  last  drive  abroad, 
accompanied  by  a  sick-nurse. 

"  Cher  Vieux, — I  have  had  a  great  many  tedious 
things  to  do  ;  I  have  also  had  a  cold  :  they  are 
both  now  arranged  to  a  certain  extent,  and  I  am 
able  to  do  what  I  should  have  done  before.  .  .  . 
Were  you  at  the  Rhymers  last  night  ?  I  wish  I 
could  have  managed  to  be  of  the  party.  I  suppose 
it  is  settled  that  we  are  to  hold  the  Laurelship  as 
a  corporate  office,  and  present  the  butt  of  Canary 
to  the  patron  du  Cheshire,  as  a  composition  for 
free  drinks.  I  am  sorry  that  Tennyson  has 
crossed  the  bar :  if  only,  that  it  leaves  us  so  much 
at  the  mercy  of  L.  Morris,  Austin  et  Cie.  But  he 
was  un  grand  poete,  tout  de  meme.  Above  all  I 
love  him  because  he  did  sacredly  hate  the  mob, 
which  whether  it  be  the  well-dressed  mob  whom 
Browning  pandered  to,  or  the  evil-smelling  mob  to 
which  William  Morris  does  now  to  the  detriment 
of  his  art  and  the  offence  of  his  own  dignity  still 
pander,  I  hold  alike  to  be  damnable,  unwholesome 
and  obscene.  .  .  .  My  muse  awoke  from  her 
torpor  of  many  months  yesterday  :  here  is  her 
feeble  utterance,  but  she  may  run  to  another 
verse  by  and  by." 

There  follows  the  MS.  of  "  In  Autumn." 


THE  LETTERS  63 

It  will  already  have  become  apparent  from  these 
letters  that  Dowson  was  a  devotee  of  the  Rhymers' 
Club,  but  I  do  not  remember  him  there,  and 
probably  missed  him  as  I  always  missed  my 
friend  Mr  Richard  Le  Gallienne.  The  notable 
Rhymers  I  remember  well  were  John  Davidson, 
Lionel  Johnson  and  Mr  Yeats.  Once  the  two 
last,  Dowson,  and  myself  remained  at  a  meeting  in 
Johnson's  rooms  after  the  rest  had  gone.  Mr 
Yeats  proposed  that  we  should  in  future  debate  on 
poetry,  and  by  way  of  beginning  he  made  a  speech, 
pointing  out  that  poetry  had  at  one  time  passed 
through  four  stages,  which  were,  I  think,  the 
Diabolic,  the  Seraphic,  the  Celestial,  and  some- 
thing else.  In  the  interests  of  truth  it  fell  to  my 
ungrateful  lot  to  point  out  that  poetry  originated 
among  savages  and  consisted  at  first  of  not  much 
more  than  lists  of  laudatory  titles,  chanted  again 
and  again  by  hunters  or  warriors  in  praise  of 
the  successful  man  among  their  number.  Ernest 
Dowson  scented  modern  science  here,  became 
uneasy,  and  voted  down  poetry  debates  in  future. 

From  one  point  of  view  he  was  right,  for,  at  the 
present  moment,  "  chatter  about  Shelley,"  and 
poetry  debate  generally,  account  for  much  of  our 
sterility,  timidity  and  lack  of  enthusiasm. 

The  Rhymers  held  one  memorable  meeting  in 
Mr  Herbert  Home's  rooms  in  the  Fitzroy  settle- 
ment. They  were  then,  so  to  speak,  rediscovered 
and  reconstituted,  having  previously  been  but  a 
small  group  of  Dublin  poets.     It  was  an  evening 


< 


64  ERNEST  DOWSON 

of  notabilities.  Mr  Walter  Crane  stood  with  his 
back  to  the  mantelpiece,  deciding,  very  kindly, 
on  the  merits  of  our  effusions.  And  round  Oscar 
Wilde,  not  then  under  a  cloud,  hovered  reverently 
Lionel  Johnson  and  Ernest  Dowson,  with  others. 
This  must  have  been  in  1891,  and  I  marvelled  at 
the  time  to  notice  the  fascination  which  poor 
Wilde  exercised  over  the  otherwise  rational.  He 
sat  as  it  were  enthroned  and  surrounded  by  a 
deferential  circle.  Describing  the  scene  from 
hearsay,  my  friend  Mr  Morley  Roberts  declared 
that  Wilde  wore  a  black  shirt  front  and  that 
Dowson  and  Johnson,  small  fairy  creatures  in 
white,  climbed  about  upon  it.  Of  the  close  of  this 
meeting,  or  of  a  quite  other  gathering  in  my  own 
rooms  in  January,  1892,  the  same  brilliant  weaver 
of  fancies  declared  that  all  the  people  present 
clasped  hands  and  whirled  down  the  stairs  like 
human  Catherine  wheels,  striking  sparks  as  they 
went  on  the  stone  stairs,  where  to  this  day  hang 
Professor  Image's  fine  cartoons  of  Saint  Peter  and 
other  saints. 

Music  at  all  times  is  much  more  popular  than 
poetry,  and  now  that  Mr  Granville  Bantock's 
setting  of  Dowson's  "  Pierrot  of  the  Minute  "  is 
becoming  a  piece  de  resistance  at  classical  concerts 
the  ghostly  poet  is  likely  to  ride  into  a  greater 
vogue  on  the  shoulders  of  sound. 

"  This  graceful  phantasy,"  says  Mrs  Newmarch, 
"  with  its  setting  that  recalls  some  exquisite  scene 


THE  LETTERS  65 

by  Fragonard,  is  full  of  suggestion  to  a  composer 
of  quick  imagination,  and  Bantock  has  responded 
with  an  almost  lavish  wealth  of  thematic  material. 
Motive  succeeds  motive  as  quickly  as  thoughts 
pursue  each  other  in  a  dream.  .  .  .  The  work  is 
scored  for  piccolo,  two  flutes,  one  oboe,  two 
clarinets  (A  and  B  flat),  one  bassoon,  three  horns, 
two  trumpets,  one  trombone,  timpani  (chromatic), 
tambourine,  glockenspiel,  triangle,  harp,  and  the 
usual  strings,  divisi." 

How  would  the  retiring  poet,  who  hated  the  mob 
and  dreaded  any  battalion  that  advanced  in  more 
than  twos  and  threes,  have  been  staggered  by  this 
regiment  of  instruments  !  I  can  see  him  now, 
in  my  mind's  eye,  musing  on  the  situation  with 
pouting  lip  and  fixity  of  rounded  orb,  and  after- 
wards with  a  shrug  and  a  kind  of  half  smile,  as 
though,  seeing  that  he  rather  suspected  humour 
as  such,  he  nevertheless  liked  the  recognition,  the 
publicity,  the  glory,  and  was  not  sure  whether  to 
laugh  or  not. 

Yet  Dowson's  poetry  has  a  kind  of  kinship  to  a 
certain  sort  of  music,  though  he  used  to  quote  with 
amusement  Gau tier's  dictum  that  music  is  the 
most  disagreeable  of  sounds.  His  lovely  poems 
that  spring  out  so  suddenly  and  inevitably  among 
the  classicisms,  the  verbiage,  the  prose  poetry  and 
futurist  experiments  of  others,  can  truly  be  com- 
pared to  some  melody  by  some  great  composer  who 
forgot  for  the  nonce  to  be  a  great  composer,  as  did 
the  dying  Schubert  when  he  perhaps  wrote  the  score 


66  ERNEST  DOWSON 

of  that  sublime  and  longing  l3n:ic  that  is  the  theme 
of  his  **  Unfinished  Symphony  "  (First  Movement). 

By  the  by,  I  have  no  recollection  of  Dowson's 
laughter  at  any  time.  Some  otherwise  cultivated 
people  we  remember  always  by  their  cynic  or 
hyaena  guffaw,  which  might  buist  out  on  one's 
grave,  but  I  fancy  I  never  heard  Dowson  laugh, 
though  his  low  and  somewhat  broken  voice  half 
remains  in  recollection.  He  refused  ever  to 
recite  his  verses  at  the  Rhymers'  meetings,  declar- 
ing that  he  had  no  gift  that  way.  He  shuddered 
at  that  kind  of  publicity,  and  left  the  task  to  others 
— ^to  Lionel  Johnson,  perchance,  who  read  marvel- 
lously, as  a  man  peritunis,  or  to  Mr  W.  B.  Yeats, 
whose  half -chant  is  incomparable. 

Writing  on  24th  October  1892,  we  find  our  poet 
in  the  throes  of  Pierrot  composition.  Many  times 
he  referred  in  conversation  to  the  difficulties 
which  he  experienced  when  writing  to  order.  Alas  ! 
towards  the  close  of  his  life  he  did  little  else. 

"  I  have  been  frightfully  busy,  having  rashly 
undertaken  to  make  a  little  Pierrot  play  in  verse 
for  Peters, 1  which  is  to  be  played  at  Aldershot, 
and  afterwards  at  the  Chelsea  Town  Hall :  the 
article  to  be  delivered  in  a  fortnight.     So  until 

1  In  his  published  letters  Aubrey  Beardsley  writes  at 
this  time  of  making  drawings  for  a  tiresome  playlet  of 
Ernest  Dowson's  !  The  principal  parts  were  taken  by 
the  late  Theodore  Peters  and  JVIiss  Beardsley,  sister  of 
the  artist,  and  the  play  was  produced  at  the  Albert  Hall 
Theatre. 


THE  LETTERS  67 

this  period  of  severe  mental  agony  be  past,  I  can 
go  nowhere.  ...  I  searched  for  you  at  the 
Independent  Theatre  the  other  night,  but  you 
were  not.  Meeting  there,  along  with  many  other 
persons,  the  poet  Green,  I  undertook  to  send  out 
notices  for  a  Rhymers'  meeting  au  Cheshire  on 
Friday  next  the  .     Will  you  take  this  in  lieu 

of  a  post-card  and  endeavour  to  come.  I  have  a 
quaint  old  German  coming  .  .  .  whom  you  will 
appreciate. 

"  L.  J.  was  here  on  Sat.  and  slept  here.  He 
told  me  that  your  Chouan  poem,  which  I  like 
immeasurably,  has  been  taken  by  Macmillan  : 
My  congratulations  !  I  have  a  map  of  Morbihan 
hanging  up  over  me  now  :  mine  eyes  water  at  the 
sight  of  it.  Quousque  tandem.  Do  mine  !  .  .  .  I 
would  this  play  were  done  :  half  of  it  is  com- 
pleted and  I  have  seven  days  more,  but  the  second 
half  is  mightily  oppressing  me.  And  I  am  horribly 
afraid  that  when  it  is  written  I  may  be  worried 
with  rehearsals  and  enforced  company  with 
terrible  South  Kensington  young  ladies  and 
fashionable  Chelsea  mesdames.  Have  you  heard 
that  Home  is  now  in  the  Temple  and  the  sacred 
house  in  Fitzroy  Street  is  full  of  men  who  know 
not  Joseph  ? 

The  sacred  house,  about  which  a  volume  might 
be  written,  had,  from  about  the  year  1891,  been 
the  home  of  the  Hobby  Horse  writers,  and  of  at 
least    one    outsider.     My   dear    friend    Professor 


68  ERNEST  DOWSON 

Selwyn  Image  still  lives  there,  and  will  he  forgive 
me  if  I  remind  him  that  the  house  was  at  one  time 
referred  to  as  "  Fitzroy  "  and  that  "  Fitzroy  "  was 
a  movement,  an  influence,  a  glory  ?  There  were 
several  Fitzroy  institutions — notably  what  was 
known  as  "  Fitzroy  silence "  at  our  austere 
dinners  and  lunches.  Lionel  Johnson,  when  I  left 
"  Fitzroy,"  declared  that  it  became  full  of  strong 
mysterious  men,  who  clamoured  for  large  chops 
and  steaks  at  meals.  They  are  probably  very 
eminent  persons  by  this  time. 

The  original  dwellers  in  ''Fitzroy,"  before  my 
time,  were  Mr  Herbert  Home,  who  with  Professor, 
then  Mr,  Selwyn  Image  edited  The  Hobby  Horse, 
Mr  Gal  ton,  editor  of  Matthew  Arnold  and  Lionel 
Johnson,  Mr  Arthur  Macmurdo,  and  Lionel 
Johnson  himself.  Professor  Image  at  that  time 
kept  a  studio  there,  as  did  the  late  Mr  Machlachlan 
the  landscapist.  Mr  Randall  Da  vies  studied 
design  under  Mr  Macmurdo  and  the  late  Hubert 
Crackanthorpe  was  for  a  time  a  pupil  of  Professor 
Image.  Numbers  of  other  distinguished  people 
visited  this  artistic  colony.  The  list  of  them 
would  include  Mr  Mortimer  Menpes,  Mr  Frank 
Brangwyn  (a  constant  visitor),  Mr  Walter  Crane, 
the  late  Oscar  Wilde,  Mr  Dolmetsch,  Mr  Ernest 
Rhys,  Mr  W.  B.  Yeats,  Mr  Will.  Rothenstein, 
Father  John  Gray,  the  Rev.  Stewart  Headlam,  and 
a  host  more.  Ernest  Dowson  had  lunched  there 
in  the  earliest  days  and  had  made  me  emulous  to 
enter  the  sacred  precincts.     As  a  later  member  of 


THE  LETTERS  69 

*'  Fitzroy,"  in  succession  to  Mr  Gallon,  I  had  the 
honour  of  introducing  our  foreign  discoverer, 
M.  George  Olivier  Destree,  then  editor  of  La  Jeune 
Belgique,  and  now  Father  Bruno,  into  the  charmed 
circle. 

*'  I  must  look  you  up  at  King's  soon,"  the 
letter  concludes.  *'  .  .  .  In  the  meanwhile  a 
dyspeptic  little  poem  'to  His  Lady  and  His 
Friend.'  " 

There  follows  the  glorious  "  In  Tempore  Senec- 
tutis,"  with  its  motto  from  the  Vulgate  :  "  Junior 
fui  etenim  senui  "  (Ps.  xxxvii.  25). 

The  next  letter,  dated  in  January,  1893,  begins 
a  prolific  epistolary  period.  He  alludes  in  it  to 
one  of  the  Rev.  Stewart  D.  Headlam's  Church  and 
Stage  parties,  which  took  place  always  in  January, 
and  were  a  brilliant  and  picturesque  episode  in  the 
crowded  artistic  life  of  the  early  nineties.  They 
should  be  put  on  record.  The  customary  scene  in 
his  beautiful  drawing-rooms  will  remain  impressed 
on  the  minds  of  his  many  grateful  guests. 


THE  LETTERS 

II 

"  Dearest  Vieux, — It  is  I,  who  should  apologise 
for  taking  leave  of  you  so  cavalierly.  It  was  a 
charming  visit ;  my  gratitude  to  you  all  for  the 
same.  .  .  .  Were  you  at  Headlam's  ?  I  was  too 
sick  and  sorry  to  come.  I  fear  my  affairs  will  not 
bear  talking  over,  or  writing  about.  They  are  like 
a  Chinese  puzzle  ;  and  grow  more  confused  and 
inextricable  the  closer  one  considers  them.  I 
endeavour  to  possess  my  soul  in  patience,  but  the 
result  is  not  so  much  resignation  as  a  sort  of  sloth 
and  tristitia,  '  which  even  monkish  moralists 
have  held  to  be  of  the  nature  of  a  sin.'  It  is 
a  vile  and  stupid  world  ;  and  it  will  be  good 
to  have  done  with  it.  In  the  meantime,  ever 
yours, 

"  [Signed)  Ernest  Dowson. 

"P.T.O. — Appended  the  last  effort  of  my 
muse." 

This  is  "  Terre  Promise,"  that  lovely  three- verse 
poem,  which  appears  at  p.  34  of  "  Verses."  He 
dates  it  i6th  January  1893. 

70 


THE  LETTERS  71 

To  the  late  Professor  Warr,  who  was  in  search  of 
an  accomplished  young  fellow  to  read  German 
and  play  the  violin  to  an  old  invalid  gentleman, 
I  recommended  Ernest  Dowson,  for  he  was  in 
those  days  always  in  quest  of  some  sort  of  per- 
manent employment  apart  from  the  dock.  The 
poet,  I  knew,  was  no  violinist,  but  it  was  supposed 
that  he  might  make  up  in  general  culture  and 
charm  for  the  lack  of  musical  accomplishment. 
His  German,  also,  was  problematical,  but  again 
it  was  thought  that  German  might  be  dispensed 
with  if  the  candidate  had  once  presented  himself. 
He  writes  characteristically  without  date  as  usual. 

"  Cher  Vieux, — What  must  you  think  of  me 
for  the  ungrateful  silence  ?  But  I  have  been  so 
beset  with  inevitable  correspondence  that  I 
have  not  possessed  my  soul  since  I  saw  you.  I 
interviewed  Warr  on  Sunday  concerning  Taffaire 
Williams  and  learnt  from  him  what  I  heard  in  your 
letter  of  Monday  that  a  musician  was  required. 
But  he  was  charming  and  I  was  glad  to  have  met 
him.  Also  I  believe  secretly  I  was  glad  that  the 
matter  had  fallen  through  for   I  have  not  the 

courage  I  fear  to  absent  myself  from St  for 

so  long. 

"  You  will  have  seen  perhaps  some  of  our  reviews. 
Their  benevolence  has  taken  my  breath  away. 
The  Speaker,  Daily  Chronicle,  Telegraph,  Scotsman, 
all  favourable,  some  of  them  gushing,  and  this 
week's  Graphic,  which  has  just  come  to  hand. 


72  ERNEST  DOWSON 

So  far  the  only  downright  bad  one  was  in  the 
World, 

"  I  was  staying  with  Teixeira  ^  last  night  in  the 
Temple,  and  sat  up  for  long  talking  to  Sherard  who 
is  there  and  who  came  over  with  Zola  and  is 
writing  a  biography  of  him  for  Chatto  and  Windus. 
He  is  charming  but  the  most  morose  and  spleenful 
person  I  have  yet  encountered.  His  conversation 
is  undiluted  vitriol — like  the  man — nescio  quem 
in  '  La  Premiere  Maitresse.'  Also  this  morning 
Gray  who  is  finally  leaving  the  Temple — quantum 
mutatus  ab  isto — fat  but  friendly,  I  fear  incurably 
given  over  to  social  things — and  about  to  take  up 
his  abode  in  Park  Lane  !  This  is  sad.  I  have  to 
return  you  your  Spenser." 

This  agreeable  epistle  is  libellous.  We  know 
what  Mr  Robert  Harborough  Sherard  did  for  our 
poor  friend.  Ernest  Dowson  died  in  his  arms. 
This  artless  first  impression  is  curious  in  view  of 
the  affection  that  Dowson  afterwards  conceived 
for  him. 

Professor  Warr,  who,  with  the  charming  and 
accomplished  Mrs  Warr,  is  not  in  the  index  of 
Mr  Holbrook  Jackson's  "  Eighteen  Nineties," 
was  a  force  in  his  time.  Somewhere  in  the  mid- 
eighties,  also  a  great  period,  he  introduced  Greek 
plays  to  London,  and  his  Tale  of  Troy,  followed 
up  later  in  1886  by  the  Alcestis  at  Queen's 
College,  Harley  Street,  were  widely  illustrated 
^  Mr  Teixeira  de  Mattos. 


THE  LETTERS  73 

and  much  discussed  performances.  All  of  us  who 
had  any  hand  in  them  were  under  the  impression 
that  nothing  much  in  that  line  could  happen 
after  our  time.  The  charming  scenery — a  Greek 
temple — was  painted,  I  think,  by  Alma  Tadema, 
but  latterly  Professor  Warr  found  it  difficult  to 
dispose  of.  Mr  Walter  Crane  helped  him  greatly  in 
these  performances,  and  pictures  of  them  from  his 
brush,  as  well  as  a  delightful  set  of  furniture  from 
his  designs,  adorned  the  Warrs'  beautiful  house. 

The  Professor's  death  was  very  sudden.  I  had 
been  to  call  on  him  one  morning  at  King's  College, 
Strand,  and  had  handed  to  him  Rostand's  extra- 
ordinarily fine  and,  with  us,  unpopular  poem  on 
Kruger.  He  put  it  in  his  pocket,  and  at  two 
o'clock,  walking  to  the  top  of  a  steep  staircase 
in  the  Temple,  fell  down  dead  of  heart  disease. 
His  wife  survived  him  for  some  years.  She  died 
of  dysentery  on  board  a  ship  travelling  from 
Athens  to  Syracuse.  Previously  she  had,  as  she 
told  me,  suffered  greatly  from  malaria  during  an 
exploration  of  Etruscan  cities  in  Italy. 

The  passing  away  of  this  most  distinguished 
couple  of  the  old  school  closed  one  of  those 
admirable  salons,  admission  to  which  was  obtained 
by  culture  rather  than  by  notoriety.  Of  such  I 
know  no  example  now.  Another  pair  of  childless 
couples,  whose  reminiscences  and  associations 
were  almost  historic,  were  Sir  Joseph  and  Lady 
Prestwich  of  Oxford  and  Shoreham,  and  Sir  John 
and  Lady  Simon  of  Kensington  Square.     One  met 


74  ERNEST  DOWSON 

everybody  in  their  salons.  Sir  John,  for  instance, 
had  been  the  friend  of  Ruskin,  whose  executor  he 
was  in  an  early  will,  of  Thackeray,  Rossetti,  Ellen 
Terry,  William  Morris — ^half  the  old  glorious  world 
that  came  before  the  Decadence.  Dowson  used  to 
talk  of  visits  to  some  wonderful  old  survivor  of  the 
time  of  Waterloo.  The  lady  is  doubtless  historic. 
He  went  there  with  Lionel  Johnson.  She  spoke 
of  dancing  with  Benjamin  Disraeli,  and  referred 
to  "  Young  Mr  Disraeli  "  and  "  Young  Mr  Glad- 
stone." 

The  Rev.  Father  Gray,  apart  in  a  life  that 
necessarily  cares  little  for  the  things  of  this  world, 
will,  I  trust,  forgive  Ernest  Dowson 's  references 
to  him.  As  priest  he  has  perhaps  long  ago  out- 
soared  London.  Besides,  Dowson  was  much 
attached  to  him  after  all. 

Can  it  be  that  I  had  been  trying  to  induce 
my  poet  to  read  Herbert  Spencer  ?  I  think  not. 
The  Spenser  volume  must  have  been  an  Edmund 
Spenser,  the  poets'  poet,  but  it  is  strange  to  reflect 
that,  if  so,  he  had  not  a  copy  of  the  ''  Faery 
Queene  "  in  his  own  possession.  He  had  not 
many  books  apparently  at  any  time,  and  though 
he  was  a  busy  reader,  he  was  curiously  incurious 
about  many  departments  of  literature  and 
erudition. 

His  lack  of  German  was  troublesome.  I  wanted 
him  to  translate  Heine  and  other  modern  Teuton 
poets  into  English  for  the  late  Professor  Buchheim, 
but  he  writes  : 


THE  LETTERS  75 

'*  Caro  Mio, — I  return  your  letter  with  abund- 
ant thanks  for  the  offer.  Alas  !  that  it  should  be 
so,  but  my  knowledge  of  German  is  so  limited  that 
I  should  be  an  encumbrance  rather  than  an  aid, 
if  I  accepted  it  I  could  only  translate  Heine  from 
French  translations,  and  that  is  scarcely  what 
your  friend  would  desire.  And  where  would 
appreciation  of  the  Heinesque  style  come  in  ?  I 
am  afraid  you  must  pass  on  this  attractive 
opportunity  to  some  one  more  competent." 

On  "  February  10  ?  1893  "  he  wrote  to  me  again 
once  more  in  search  of  an  employment.  The 
letter  is  one  of  the  very  few  to  me  that  he  ever 
dated,  and  even  then  the  "  10  "  is  queried.  He 
used  business  paper,  and  seemed  in  a  strenuous 
mood.  We  have  all  the  dimensions  of  his  dock 
in  the  top  left-hand  corner. 

''  Cher  Vieux, — Yesterday  an  advt.  in  The 
Times  was  sent  me,  for  a  librarian,  in  a  Public  Free 
Library  (under  the  Public  Library  Acts)  ...  I 
have  been  advised  to  apply  for  this,  I  fear,  not  very 
desirable  post,  and  I  have  thought  that  if  you,  with 
your  official  signature  of  Librarian  .  .  .  could 
give  me  a  testimonial,  I  might  stand  some  chance. 
Could  you  consider  me  then,  in  a  short  missive 
a  competent  person  to  hand  out  dime  novels  to 
transpontine  shop  boys  ?  You  might  mention 
that  I  have  a  knowledge  of  French  and  Italian  ; 
and  in  fact — make  the  most  of  me. 


76  ERNEST  DOWSON 

''The  office  is  really  *  librarian  and  secretary' : 
and  not  more  than  three  testimonials  are  to  be  sent 
in.  A  proviso  that  some  experience  of  a  public 
library  is  required  rather  handicaps  me,  but  it  is 
worth  trying  for — ^£i6o  and  an  unfurnished 
apartment  on  the  premises.  I  write  to  Sayle  for 
another  testimony,  and  for  my  third  shall  try  and 
secure  a  word  from  some  city  functionary  as  to  my 
business  capacities.     T.  a  t. 

"  (Signed)  Ernest  Dowson. 

"  Alas  !  that  I  should  have  to  write  to  you  again 
so  speedily  in  such  a  matter  :  this  is  truly  descent 
from  the  clouds.  Ma  che  vuole  ?  one  must 
exist." 

It  is  melancholy  to  reflect  on  the  great  army 
of  brilliant  men  who  have  spent  anxious  hours 
in  their  youth  endeavouring  to  obtain  positions 
and  regular  pay.  The  very  culture  of  such  men 
stands  in  their  way,  and  this  is  a  point  they  find 
it  hard  to  understand.  Yet  one  cannot  imagine 
Dowson  tied  to  the  airless  occupation  he  here 
proposed  to  himself.  He  would  have  wearied  of 
it  in  a  very  short  time.  That  he  was  businesslike 
and  methodical  when  he  liked  is,  however,  proved 
by  such  letters  as  this.  Indeed,  poets  are  not  the 
entire  dreamers  that  they  are  popularly  supposed 
to  be.  The  very  meticulousness  required  in 
minding  and  measuring  iambics  and  especially  in 
writing  blank  verse — that  most  difficult  of  tasks — 


THE   LETTERS  77 

presupposes  very  much  the  same  set  of  qualities 
as  are  required  in  affairs  or  in  the  prosaic  paths  of 
science  and  research. 
Later  he  writes  : 

"  Very  many  thanks,  indeed,  for  the  testimony. 
I  had  your  benevolent  document  with  the  others 
type-copied  and  sent  them  off  yesterday,  the 
latest  possible  day.  I  cut  out  a  comment  upon 
my  German  proficiency  from  yours,  for  alas  !  my 
knowledge  of  that  difficult  but  dear  tongue  is 
too  rudimentary  to  be  mentioned.  I  do  not,  for 
the  rest,  attach  very  much  importance  to  the 
matter,  for  I  am  afraid  it  is  too  substantial  [!] 
to  be  attainable.  It  is  just  worth  applying  for 
however,  and  in  any  result,  I  am  infinitely 
obliged  to  you.  .  .  .  I  cannot  write  a  line  of  any 
kind  just  now  :   why,  I  know  not." 

Would  this  kind  of  regular  work  have  saved 
poor  Ernest  Dowson's  life  ?  It  is  a  question 
whether  he  would  ever  have  tolerated  the  con- 
ditions of  the  career  which  he  proposed  to  himself. 
There  are  erudite  librarians,  who,  in  the  long  run, 
grow  sick  of  the  faces  of  their  books  and  cry  with 
Solomon  "  of  the  making  of  books  there  is  no 
end."  One  dear  old  gentleman  confessed  that  he 
made  regular  war  on  what  he  called  "  those 
rubbishy  ancient  tomes,"  and  assured  me  that  he 
had  burnt  numbers  of  enormities  (medical)  pub- 
lished  in   the  reign   of   Queen   Elizabeth.     And 


78  ERNEST  DOWSON 

another  eminent  man,  not  a  librarian,  but  so 
well  known  that  one  may  not  write  his  name  at 
large,  tells  me  that  he  regularly  burns  a  volume 
every  evening  of  his  life,  as  the  seventeenth- 
century  editors  said,  "  to  prevent  the  dis- 
semination of  false  reports,"  or,  as  he  phrases  it, 
"  error/' 

But  I  did  once  succeed  in  getting  my  friend  a 
post  of  sorts.  There  appeared  an  advertisement 
in  The  Athenceum,  I  think,  calling  for  a  brilliant 
pen,  wielded  by  a  man  of  high  social  connections. 
I  interviewed  the  editor,  and  was  almost  chosen 
myself,  having  proved  my  social  connections  and 
my  pen  to  the  top  of  my  bent.  The  editor,  who 
very  properly  valued  blood  and  brilliancy  with 
the  pen,  was  a  mystic,  and,  like  Hermotimus,  had 
spent  much  time  outside  the  portals  of  his  earthly 
tabernacle.  He,  at  that  first  interview,  told  me 
that  he  had  been  to  India  in  one  night  and 
thoroughly  knew  the  look  of  it,  and  the  feel  of  it. 
I  envied  him,  for  all  our  innumerable  Anglo-Indian 
friends  are  always  very  silent  on  the  matter  of 
their  long  sojourns  in  that  mysterious  gorgeous 
East ! 

"  Oh  for  the  joy  that  might  have  been. 
Oh  for  the  joy  that  shall  not  be, 
And  that  which  thou  hast  never  seen. 
And  that  which  thou  mayst  never  see  !  '-- 

Ernest  Dowson  joined  the  staff  of  the  journal, 
a  weekly  of  some  dimensions,  as  assistant  editor. 


THE   LETTERS  79 

and  contributed  certain  admirable  papers  thereto,  \ 
notably  "  The  Cult  of  the  Child."     But  he  severed 
his  connection  with  it  before  very  long. 

It  is  as  an  adorer  of  childhood  that  his  lovers 
and  friends,  who  have  kept  his  memory  green,  will 
best  remember  him  ! 

All  this  happened  in  1893,  a  period  when  his 
myth,  as  well  as  Aubrey  Beardsley's,  was  in 
process  of  formation.  By  the  American  Mr 
Talcott  Williams,  and  7nutatis  mutandis,  by  Mr 
"HN  Arthur  Symons  the  melancholy  or  lurid  myth  of 
Ernest  Dowson  will  inevitably  be  perpetuated. 
**  Born  in  1867,  he  died  in  1900,  having  thrown 
away  his  life  in  such  reckless  and  foolish  dissipa- 
tion as  comes  to  few — Dowson  had  the  best  of  life 
before  him,  and  chose  the  worst.  Nor  is  there 
aught  which  furnishes  excuse  for  this  in  the  brief 
life  prefaced  by  Arthur  Symons." 

By  "  prefaced  "  one  understands  "  written  as 
preface  "  :  otherwise  I  should  have  been  tempted 
to  say  I  do  not  know  what  Mr  Arthur  Symons 
wrote  as  introduction  to  his  classical  life  of  Ernest 
Dowson  in  "  The  Collected  Poems  of  Ernest 
Dowson  "  (1909).  But  I  rejoice  in  the  knowledge 
that,  so  far  as  Ernest  Dowson  is  concerned,  the 
American  critic  has  been  "  side-tracked."  Dowson, 
as  Mr  Edgar  Jepson  rightly  protests,  was  not  "  an 
unpleasant  sort  of  wastrel." 

I  failed  to  make  my  friend  a  colleague  in 
librarianship,  but  we  were  colleagues  for  a  moment 
in  journalism,  for  the  very  day  that  I  received  my 


8o  ERNEST  DOWSON 

first  appointment  as  an  academic  librarian  in  1890, 
I  was  also  appointed  editor  of  a  small  society 
weekly.  There  are  few  moments  of  pure  joy  in 
the  life  of  the  average  scholar  and  gentleman, 
who  has  to  pay  income-tax  on  a  war  footing  while 
his  acquaintances  play  at  Fabianism,  but  I  shall 
never  forget  my  joy  in  at  once  resigning  this 
editorship,  my  pride,  my  glowing  conceit,  as  of 
the  dear  old  Pharisee  who  was  not  as  other  men  are, 
or  the  dear  old  Quaker  who  had  never  committed 
a  sin  and  wondered  to  my  mother  why  people 
made  such  a  fuss  about  their  sins.  They  must 
be  posing — ^those  people  !  As  well  talk  about 
their  hats  ! 

Ernest  Dowson,  on  his  side,  failed  to  make  me 
a  much-read  poet,  though  such  was  his  modesty 
that  for  long  ere  the  publication  of  his  "  Verses  " 
we  had  discussed  a  joint  production,  the  title  of 
which  exercised  us  considerably.  I  suggested 
**  Vine-leaf  and  Violet,"  and  he  wrote  the  intro- 
ductory lines,  the  MS.  of  which  I  hold  in  my  hand 
at  this  moment.  The  search  for  pretty  and 
rather  absurd  titles  was  more  fashionable  twenty 
years  ago  than  now.  Our  discussions  ended  in 
nothing,  and  "  Vine-leaf  and  Violet  "  figures  as 
'*  A  Coronal  with  His  Songs  and  Her  Days  to 
His  Lady  and  to  Love."  It  is  an  honourable, 
if  thrifty,  final  destination.  Lionel  Johnson 
perhaps  was  to  have  been  a  third  collaborator 
with  us.  Hence,  possibly,  the  following  letter, 
which  may,  however,  refer  to  the  Rhymers'  Book. 


THE  LETTERS  8i 

"  Cher  Vieux, — Do  you  like  the  enclosed  verses 
enough  to  include  them  in  the  Book  in  lieu  of 
'  Benedictio  Domini '  ?  Johnson,  to  whom  I  have 
conveyed  the  weighty  packet,  seems  to  like  them 
the  best  of  my  budget.  He  was  very  amiable  and 
we  drank  much  absinthe  together,  I  vote  for  six 
of  your  poems  with  much  difficulty  for  I  liked  all 
so  much  that  I  wished  to  see  them  all  included. 
I  placed  the  '  Cinerarium,'  '  Breton  Beggar  '  and 
*  Nejnun  '  first.  Of  L.  J.'s  I  think  I  most  admired 
the  '  Cavalier  and  Mystic'  Verlaine  is  after  all 
still  in  London.  I  am  dining  with  Home  and 
Home  Pere  at  the  Constitutional  to-night  to  meet 
him.  So  that  if  I  have  the  courage  I  will  even 
suggest  to  the  master  that  he  should  honour  his 
disciples  with  a  visit  to  the  Cheese.  ,.  A  bientot — 
with  all  amenities  to  mesdames  votre  mere  et  votre 
femme  et  a  cette  chere  Bebe.     T.  a  toi. 

"  {Signed)  Ernest  Dowson." 

Pray,  courteous  reader,  do  not  accuse  me  of 
vanity  because  I  recopy  this  letter  in  full. 
Believe  me,  I  am  in  no  wise  anxious  to  hook 
myself  on  to  the  skirts  of  the  great,  but  since  the 
great,  whose  myth  is  forming  so  portentously, 
wrote  thus  to  me,  I  desire  only  to  show  matters  in 
their  then  proportions. 

In  the  years  of  the  formation  of  the  Dowson 
myth,  which  has  now  grown  half  diabolic,  the  poet 
was  modest,  charming,  a  boy.  The  Devil,  a  spirit 
of  imperfect  education,  a  rebel  angel  who  had 


X 


82  ERNEST  DOWSON 

refused  to  go  through  the  mill,  threw  his  shadow 
over  our  beloved  poet's  fame.  And  we,  who  are 
on  the  side  of  the  Angels,  refuse  to  give  him  up  to 
the  Demon,  and  shall  die,  some  of  us,  still  con- 
testing the  Dowson  myth. 

O  my  dear  poet,  would  that  you  were  back 
here  to-night — would  that  you  were  back  here, 
with  musing  eye  and  queer  customary  cigar, 
forcibly  to  repudiate  some  at  least  of  those  who 
have  no  right  to  abuse  Davy  Garrick !  Alas, 
what  a  niche  you  are  filling — a  second  Chatterton. 
The  young  fellows  gaze  on  your  friend  as  "  the 
man  who  knew  Dowson."  It  is  a  case  of  Brown- 
ing's "  Death  in  the  Desert,"  or  '*  Did  you  once  see 
Shelley  plain  ?  "  One  has  even  heard  of  a 
*'  Dowson  Club  "  being  formed  of  late  years. 

On  the  back  of  the  letter  last  quoted  is  the  MS. 
of  the  incomparable,  the  beautiful  "  Supreme 
Unction,"  than  which  perhaps  no  better  poem  has 
been  written  since.  It  is  signed  simply  "  E.  D.," 
by  him  who  had  asked  :  "  Do  you  like  the  enclosed 
verses  enough  to  include  them  in  the  Book  ?  " 
Wonderful ! 


THE   LETTERS 

III 

He  made  a  dash  down  to  us  when  we  were  staying 
at  Haslemere  in  March  and  April,  1893.  He 
writes  : 

"  I  hope  you  will  not  be  too  surprised  with  my 
audacious  wire.  I  was  meaning  to  stay  on  in 
town  until  Sunday  at  any  rate,  but  my  foreman's 
youngest  boy  died  here  suddenly  last  night  and 
the  air  is  so  depressing  that  1  determined  to  go 
at  once.  ...  I  cannot  stay  any  longer  in  this 
atmosphere  of  dreariness  and  tears." 

It  was  Easter  time,  and  on  a  hillside  covered 
with  dry  bracken  we  sat  in  hot  premature  sun- 
shine, and  he  read  me  Browning,  especially  */  The 
Grammarian's  Funeral  "  and 

*-  Where  the  many-tinted  end  of  sunset  smiles. '- 

.  I  An  enthusiast  for  Browning's  shorter  poems,  he 
indoctrinated  me. 

'  Ernest  Dowson  in  the  country  was  a  delight. 
Seeing  an  innocent  newt  walking  out  slowly  on  the 


84  ERNEST  DOWSON 

sandy  road  on  the  way  to  Professor  Tyndall's 
house  with  its  strangely  blocked-out  view  of  the 
adjoining  dwelling  and  grounds,  he  announced  with 
horror  that  the  newt  was  a  serpent,  and  arming 
himself  with  a  large  stake,  which  he  kept  in  his 
hand  for  the  remainder  of  the  walk,  he  proceeded 
to  belabour  the  little  creature,  which  ended  by 
being  banged  down,  quite  unscathed,  in  the  deep 
sand...  He  made  me  get  another  stick  in  case  we 
met  more  dangerous  reptiles. 

At  night,  howevei,  he  really  shone,  for  at  our 
picnicky  supper,  he  cooked  an  excellent  dish  of 
eggs  in  the  Italian  manner  with  oil,  and  with  sage 
gathered  in  the  little  garden.  To  the  poor  little 
boy's  death  at  the  Dock  we  owed  a  delightful, 
artless  glimpse  of  the  poet  making  holiday. 

His  next  letter  contains  matter  for  controversy, 
since  anyone  who  remembers  the  Jubilee  decora- 
tions of  1887 — the  tossing  bower  of  roses,  for 
instance,  into  which  St  James's  Street  was  turned 
and  the  soft  glow  of  numberless  Chinese  lanterns 
— and  then  compares  the  illuminations  of  Jubilee 
night  with  the  hard  gaseous  excess  on  the  Seine 
bridges  on  the  centennaire  night  of  the  French 
Revolution  in  i88g,  cannot  but  decide  in  favour  of 
poor  old  London. 

(July,  1893.) 
"  I  have  been  a  wreck  of  this  hot  weather  and 
of   this   base   city's   base   outburst   of   snobbish 
sycophancy.     London  on  a  gala  day,  when  one 


THE  LETTERS  85 

thinks  of  what  Paris  and  Florence  can  manage, 
makes  me  think  of  an  ugly,  fat,  vulgar  old  woman 
putting  on  the  graces  of  coquetry  :'|o,ne  wants  to 
hide  one's  face  in  one's  hands.  You  are  fortunate 
to  be  out  of  it.  It  is  not  all  over,  yesterday  was  as 
objectionable  as  Thursday.  I  daresay  it  will  be 
all  right  on  Monday,  and  then  I  may  hope  once 
more  to  be  in  a  reasonably  good  temper  :  the  last 
three  days  have  severely  tried  it.  I  shall  think 
of  you  filling  your  green  book  on  a  mossy  bank,  O 
founder  of  the  Haslemere  school.  Hillier  ran  down 
and  lunched  here  t'other  day  on  his  way  from  the 
Lakes  ...  he  has  a  cottage  without  a  name  in 
a  pathless  wood  :  so  I  fear  we  shall  never  see  him 

again. was  very  ebullient  all  the  week, 

and  yesterday  evening  was  sober  for  the  first  time 
since  they  began  to  put  up  the  decorations.  .  .  . 
If  London  increases  in  heat  and  aridity  I  suppose 
I  shall  have  to  retire  from  it  for  a  brief  space,  but 

I  shall  hold  on  as  long  as  I  can.     In matters 

progress  as  well  as  I  suppose  they  are  likely  to — 
I  should  think  so  probably  if  I  had  the  great  grace 
of  patience ;  not  possessing  that,  I  die  many 
deaths  daily.  Let  me  hear  from  you  some  day, 
and  especially  that  you  and  your  folk  .  .  .  are 
laying  in  copious  stores  of  health.  I  shall  probably 
bore  you  from  time  to  time  with  my  letters." 

They  were  letters,  indeed,  which  never  bored, 
but  were  waited  for  impatiently  by  their  recipients. 
I  am  sure  I  speak  for  a  whole  circle.     E[e  closes  the 


86  ERNEST  DOWSON 

following  missive  with  a  quotation  from,  I  think, 
Thomas  Gray's  correspondence,  which  at  that 
time  he  read  constantly. 

"  Cher  Vieux, — How  are  you  all  finding 
yourselves,  and  where  ;  and  when  are  we  going  to 
meet  again  ?  The  whirligig  of  time  has  taken 
my  people  to  world's  end,  which  is  called  by 
the  sublunary  '  Chad  well  Heath  ' — and  there,  I 
suppose,  for  the  present  I  must  pass  penitential 
Sundays  with  much  regret  for  your  ancient, 
hospitable  supper-table. 

'*  I  suppose  you  are  away  from  town  :  most 
people  are,  I  think,  now.  I  have  had  a  prolonged 
epistolary  paralysis  or  I  would  have  afflicted  you 
with  a  letter  before.  In  fact  I  have  only  just 
reminded  myself  to-day  that  Greene's  letter 
demanding  rhymes  is  still  unanswered  and  likely 
to  remain  so.  But  I  am  trying  to  hunt  up  the 
necessary  half  dozen  and  will  dispatch  them  : 
though  I  should  think  the  Star  Chamber  will  have 
decided  by  this  time  to  dispense  with  me.  The 
weather  is — ^well,  too  damned  hot  to  write  about 
for  fear  of  burning  the  paper  with  expletives.  I 
imagine  you  in  Devonshire,  drinking  cider,  playing 
skittles  and  eating  cream  du  pays.  Write  to  me 
and  assure  me  that  this  is  so,  or  if  not  that  you  are 
at  [home]  and  will  look  in  upon  me  here  one 
afternoon .  I  am  verily,  I  believe , '  alone  in  London . ' 
The  darkness  of  the  unknown  has  swallowed  up 
Hillier,  the  provincial  stage  Marmie.  ...  I  do 


THE  LETTERS  87 

not  even  attempt  to  write  any  longer,  not  even 
verses.  My  mental  horizon  doesn't  extend 
beyond  cooling  drinks  and  cigarettes.  Forgive 
this  tedious  letter.  It  is  too  hot  to  write  letters  : 
but  on  the  other  hand  they  are  the  only  literature 
that  is  light  enough  for  one  to  read — so  I  may 
conclude  with  an  apt  enough  citation  from  a 
prince  of  letter  writers  though  a  most  vile  poet — 
(face  Matthew  Arnold  !) 

" '  To  be  tiresome  is  the  privilege  of  old  age 
and  absence  ;  I  avail  myself  of  the  latter  and  the 
former  I  have  anticipated.  If  I  do  not  speak  to 
you  of  my  own  affairs,  it  is  not  from  want  of  con- 
fidence, but  to  spare  you  and  myself.  My  day  is 
over — what  then  ?  I  have  had  it.  To  be  sure  I 
have  shortened  it  ;  and  if  I  had  done  as  much  by 
this  lettei,  it  would  have  been  as  well ! '  " 

At  the  end  of  August  he  writes  again  : 

"  Caro  Vecchio, — I  am  glad  you  have  been  to 
Greene,  you  will  be  able  to  make  my  peace  with 
him.  I  sent  off  versicles  of  a  sort  to  him  before 
I  left  town — perhaps  you  saw  them  there — 8  in 
all.  ...  I  have  been  reading  '  Many  Inventions.* 
Mulvaney's  stories,  above  all  '  Love  o'  Women,' 
like  me  most  :  apres — '  One  View  of  the  Question,' 
a  beautiful  piece  of  satire  on  English  mob- 
worship.  .  .  .  We  have  received  the  last  proofs  of 
Comedy  of  Masks.  I  have  seen  no  one — suppose 
every  one  away." 


i^ 


88  ERNEST  DOWSON 

The  other  half  of  the  "  we,"  who  with  him 
received  last  proofs,  is,  of  course,  his  oldest 
friend,  Mr  Arthur  Moore,  collaborator  in  those 
exquisitely  composed  novels,  of  which  Mr  Moore 
is  said  by  Mr  Herbert  Home  to  have  written 
alternate  chapters.  Collaboration  is  assuredly  the 
supreme  test  of  friendship  and  long-suffering. 

On  the  birth  of  my  daughter,  on  2nd  September 
1893,  he  wrote  to  me  the  following  pretty  letter,  and 
headed  it  '*  Cressa  ne  careat  alba  Dies  !  "  ^ — which 
is  a  reminiscence  and  a  misquotation  of  Horace. 

''  My  Dear  Victor, — Your  letter  filled  me  with 
joy — ^with  its  double  news.  I  send  my  very  sincere 
congratulations,  and  all  good  wishes  for  the  con- 
tinued prosperity  of  the  Bambina  and  the  speedy 
recovery  of  the  Donna. 

The  patronising  saint  of  Sept.  2  according  to 
the  Roman  calendar  is  St  Stephen  of  Hungary — 
(St  Etienne) — of  whom  I  know  not  much.  But 
in  a  Milan  calendar  I  find  the  day  set  apart  to  a 
certain  San  Mansueto — of  whom  I  know  less — 
that  is  nothing — but  whose  name  is  excellently  pro- 
pitious. My  compliments  then  to  Mdlle.  Etienne- 
Mansueta  Plarr.  I  append  certain  versicles  pseudo- 
i8th-cent.  with  which  she  has  already  inspired 
me  :    may  she  be  provocative  of  many  more.'' 

There  follow  his  well-known  lines,  which  are 
perhaps  his  sole  venture  in  the  manner  of  Pope, 
whom,  however,  he  greatly  admired : — 

^  "Cressa  ne  careat  pulchra  dies  nota,"  Carm.,  Lib.  I.  36. 


THE  LETTERS  89 

Mark  the  day  white  on  which  the  Fates  have  smiled  : 

Eugenio  and  Egeria  have  a  child, 

On  whom  abundant  grace  kind  Jove  imparts 

If  she  but  copy  either  parent's  parts. 

Then,  Muses  !    long  devoted  to  her  race 

Grant  her  Egeria's  virtues  and  her  face  ; 

Nor  stay  your  bounty  there,  but  add  to  it 

Eugenio's  learning  and  Eugenio's  wit  !  " 


The  poem  is  the  kind  of  impromptu  that  is 
written  in  the  course  of  a  letter,  for  it  contains 
three  erasures,  but  it  is  truly  an  exquisite  compli- 
ment, from  which  all  possibility  of  self-glorifica- 
tion on  the  part  both  of  subject  and  dedicatees 
has  been  withdrawn  now  that  it  has  been  more 
than  once  reprinted  without  their  names.  One 
line  is  even  cited  by  a  writer,  evidently  not  too 
conversant  with  Latin,  to  show  that  Dowson 
doted  on  the  colour  white  ! 

It  is  a  question  whether  it  is  more  chastening 
for  the  literary  to  find  that  their  estate  in  a  famous 
poet's  poem  has  been  reft  away  from  them  or  to 
discover  that  a  bantling  of  their  own  brains  has 
become  anonymous  though  printed  as  a  *'  Little 
Prose  Classic  for  Children."  However,  it  is  a 
comfort  to  reflect  that  suppressions  and  passings- 
over,  which  are  akin  to  malice,  can  be  set  right 
in  memoirs,  or,  better  still,  in  library  catalogues, 
which  are  forms  of  literature  meant  for  posterity. 

We  were,  of  course,  greatly  touched  by  the 
lines,  though  one  could  have  wished  that  a  more 
Dowsonian  metre  had  been  adopted  than  the  easily 


90  ERNEST  DOWSON 

written  eighteenth  -  century  couplet.  Likewise, 
I  was  a  little  tickled  at  the  thought  that  a  baby, 
a  descendant  of  generations  of  Huguenots,  of  a 
vVorshipper  of  the  Goddess  of  Reason  during  the 
Terreur,  and  of  a  sceptical  French  savant,  should 
have  been  even  tentatively  named  after  a  saint  in 
a  Milan  calendar.  A  grandfather  and  again  his 
grandfather  would  have  turned  in  their  graves 
had  the  child  been  christened  according  to  the  dear 
poet's  orders.  One  of  them  at  least  would  have 
wished  for  such  grand  old  eighteenth-century 
family  names  as  Maria  Salome,  Maria  Margaretta, 
Amalia  Franziska,  and  Frederica  ! 

I  did  not  point  this  out  to  the  poet,  but  I  think 
I  did  point  out  to  him  that  to  many  of  us  in  England 
it  brings  back  the  memory  of  Omdurman  and  to 
many  more  in  France  that  of  a  national  tragedy. 
"  Sedan  !  "  how  well  the  baby's  father  and  aunt 
had  had  that  word  driven  into  their  childish  brains 
when,  as  little  creatures,  in  a  beautiful  wild  forest 
near  Sainte  Odile  in  the  Vosges,  they  saw  one  of 
their  elders  stop  to  talk  to  two  ragged  wayworn 
men  in  blouses,  sitting  by  the  side  of  the  path. 
Men  were  these  who  rested  dejectedly,  with 
drooping  heads  and  hanging  arms.  They  brought 
the  news  of  Sedan  !  They  could  not  believe  the 
thing  they  told. 

An  hour  afterwards  all  the  old  brown  gnarled 
hands  at  the  Convent  of  Sainte  Odile  were  being 
wrung  by  refugee  peasants,  by  nuns  and  monks 
who  had  been  peasants  in  their  mundane  time  ! 


THE  LETTERS  91 

Down  there,  down  there,  in  the  far  vine-clad  plain 
with  its  Prankish  memories,  the  plain  of  Alsace, 
where  Guttenberg  discovered  his  j)rehim  in  the 
wine-press,  among  the  villages  with  their  roman- 
esque  archways  and  fountains,  their  ancient  steep- 
roofed  houses  and  yokes  of  plump  somnolent 
cream-coloured  oxen,  the  dreaded  Prussian,  who 
ate  queer  food  and  had  such  underbred  manners, 
would  soon  set  his  heavy-booted  foot  ! 

Well,  I  have  run  on  inordinately,  but  it  is  a 
digression  for  his  eye,  if  he  can  see  it  !  And  since 
I  am  launched  upon  a  sea  of  egoism,  I  will  continue 
his  letter. 

'*  Forgive  this  trifling  :  seriously  I  am  very 
pleased.  Also  with  the  prospects  of  the  '  Doric 
Moods.'  I  will  still  maintain  that  they  owe  their 
good  reception  entirely  to  their  merits  and  no  whit 
to  diplomacy  of  Johnson's  or  Le  Gallienne.  Our 
book  is  due  for  the  15th  of  this  month.  They  have 
just  sent  us  a  suggested  design  for  the  cover — a 
tragic  and  comic  mask  with  liberty  to  substitute 
what  we  like — within  5  days  !  !  Of  course  in  the 
time  one  can  do  nothing :  otherwise  perhaps 
Home  or  Ricketts  might  have  been  requisitioned." 

Later  Ernest  Dowson  writes  to  ''  Cher  Vieux," 
always  with  his  accustomed  modesty : 

*'  The  Comedy  of  Masks  appears  on  Friday — 
nominally — but  I  see  no  reason  now  why  it  should 


92  ERNEST  DOWSON 

be  actually  any  further  delayed.  You  must 
command  it  from  Mudie's.  I  tremble  at  the 
prospect  of  being  reviewed — I  am  painfully  con- 
scious of  the  innumerable  blemishes  and  alas  ! 
the  weakest  points  are  in  the  first  volume  so  that 
I  fear  sleep  will  overcome  the  reviewer  before  he 
reach  any  of  our  less  banal  passages.  What  fools 
we  are  to  write — or  rather  to  publish  !  Mercifully 
Lionel  does  not  review  novels,  and  as  to  the  opinion 

of  the  average  novel-reviewing ish  animal — we 

will  not  think  of  it. 

"  Peters  has  turned  up  in  town  again  very 
redolent  of  the  States  and  very  enthusiastic  over 
the  Highlands. 

"  How  shall  you  call  la  petite  ?  This  will  be  an 
exercise  almost  as  difficult  as  the  choice  of  a  book 
title.  En  passant  can  you  suggest  a  name  for 
notre  prochain  roman,  which  is  just  half  completed. 
'  A  Misalliance  '  is,  I  fear,  bad  English.  '  The 
Opportunist '  occurs  to  me,  also  '  The  Interlopers,' 
but  none  of  these  is  good.  It's  better  than 
*  Masks  '  we  both  think,  but  vindictive,  savage, 
spleenful,  libellous  almost,  to  the  last  degree. 
Heaven  knows  when  it  will  be  finished." 

We  called  "  la  petite "  Marion  among  other 
prenoms,  though  she  has  grown  up  to  womanhood 
a  Mansueta,  that  name  which  the  dear  poet  wished 
her  to  bear. 

It  is  strange  that  the  remarkable  and  burnished 


THE  LETTERS  93 

novels  of  Ernest  Dowson  and  Mr  Arthur  Moore 
have  been  spoken  of  less  than  some  of  the  former 
author's  writings.  Ernest  Dowson,  indeed,  began 
to  be  spoken  of  at  an  early  date.  His  first  short 
story  in  prose,  reprinted  with  others  in  "  Dilem- 
mas "  (Elkin  Mathews,  1895,  1912  and  1913), 
appeared  in  Temple  Bar  in  1888  under  the  title 
"  Souvenirs  of  an  Egoist."  The  novels  apart, 
he  never,  indeed,  suffered  from  that  unmerited 
neglect  which  is  the  portion  of  so  many.  To  me 
part  of  the  tragedy  of  his  life  was  this — that  fame 
or  notoriety,  which  you  will — warred  against  his 
essential  self.  As  a  fresh  boy  he  charmed.  Then 
came  nascent  literary  celebrity  in  The  Savoy  and 
elsewhere,  and  he  rocked  at  its  approach.  That, 
as  Mr  Edgar  Jepson  was  able  to  observe,  he  was  the 
true  Ernest  Dowson  to  the  end,  proves  that  breed 
conquered  environment.  The  dog  of  race  hunts 
according  to  his  traditions,  says  the  French 
adage. 

He  writes  at  about  this  time  of  being  engaged 
every  evening  in  a  week,  which  proves  that  he  was 
living  a  happy  life  and  that  certain  troubles  of  the 
spirit  oppressed  him  not  too  heavily. 

"  The  Comedy  is  out  at  last — very  charm- 
ing in  its  outward,  visible  aspect,  and  for  the 
rest  I  hope  no  one  will  discover  as  many 
inward  blemishes  as  I  can.  I  am  anxious  to 
see  the  Infanta — ^her  names  are  all  pretty.  Has 
she  begun  to  show  any  literary  tendencies  yet  ?  " 


94  ERNEST  DOWSON 

He  wrote  in  early  winter  : 

"  Will  you  see  the  November  Bookman  ?  .  .  . 
they  have  made  quite  a  creditable  article  of  our 
meagre  biographies,  although  it  is  news  to  me  that 
I  have  been  '  steadily  making  my  way  in  literature.' 
There  is  also  a  good  review  in  it  of  Masks  .  .  . 
Is  the  Infanta  short  petticoated  yet  ?  Or  when 
does  that  interesting  development  take  place  ? 
I  went  down  to  see  Marmie  play  at  Wimbledon 
the  other  day.  He  was  an  excellent  Ralph 
Nickleby  in  a  tedious  play." 

Poor  Dowson  was  no  Dickensian,  until  the  time 
of  his  death,  when,  as  Mr  Sherard  has  put  on 
record,  he  began  to  read  the  master  with  all  the 
rapture  of  a  literary  discoverer. 

"  I  have  seen  no  one  much  except  the  Temple 
folk  lately  and  Sherard  who  camped  out  here  one 
night  after  a  peregrination  with  me  in  the  East 
End  during  which,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  I  contracted 
a  frantic  cold  which  is  still  harassing  me.  .  .  . 
Shall  you  be  aux  Rhymers  to-morrow  ?  " 

Apropos  of  his  East  End  ramble  withMr  Sherard 
he  told  me  that  one  night  he  had  gone  out  for  a 
stroll  from  his  dock-house,  and  had  been  almost  at 
once  knocked  down.  He  awoke  from  insensibility 
after  some  time,  and  found  that  he  had  been 
robbed  of  his  money — a  very  small  sum. 


THE  LETTERS  95 

The  thief  must  have  felt  like  Rivarol's  burglar, 
who,  breaking  into  Rivarol's  escritoire,  was 
addressed  by  the  wit  with  an  "Ah  ga,  mon  ami! 
How  often  have  I  looked  in  there  to  no  purpose  on 
the  chance  of  finding  a  stray  louis  d'or  !  " 

Writing  on  20th  December  1893,  he  mentions 
a  meeting  with  Mr  Edgar  Jepson,  the  novelist,  at 
a  small  Rhymers'  Club  gathering.  "  Him  I  was 
delighted  to  see  again  although  I  did  not  recognise 
him,  nor  he  me."  Dowson  thought  the  other  a 
good  deal  changed  by  his  sojourn  in  the  West 
Indies,  and  speaks,  in  the  letter,  of  his  own  coming 
"  exile  in  Chalons-sur-Saone  or  Saumur-sur-Oise." 
He  was  probably  then  meditating  a  language 
mastership  abroad. 

He  discusses  various  literary  matters  in  other 
notes,  as  when  he  mentions  a  Verlaine  lecture 
promoted  by  Mr  Herbert  Home.  The  tickets  were 
five  shillings  each,  and  he  says : 

"  I  really  think  nous  autres,  Rimeurs,  should 
have  been  put  on  the  '  Free  List.'  I  had  a 
charming  evening  at  the  Odd  Volumes  last  night. 
I  sat  opposite  Todhunter,  who  had  three  Irish 
guests  (Rolleston,  Percival  Graves  and  Standish 
O'Grady,  a  charming  Celt) .  My  Lord  Mayor  came 
with  a  gorgeous  creature  to  wait  on  him.  .  .  . 
There  was  no  one  else  there  whom  I  knew  except 
— by  sight  only — ^York  Powell." 

These  are  manifestly  the  phrases  of  a  man 
interested  in  existence — not  yet  an  invalid. 


THE   LETTERS 

IV 

In  the  spring  of  1894,  in  an  amusing  letter  excusing 
himself  for  having  intruded  upon  us  with  Mr 
Jepson  when  we  were  entertaining  a  friend  against 
whom  I  had  warned  him  as  not  being  sympathetic 
with  poets,  he  speaks  of  retiring  to  Mr  Hillier's 
"  cottage  in  the  wood,"  for  Easter  with  "  LaTerre  " 
in  order  to  put  in  twenty  pages  a  day  of  translation 
to  make  up  arrears.  Just  then  the  absolutely 
literal  rendering  into  English  of  Zola's  humorous 
libel  on  the  French  peasant  was  engaging  him  daily. 
He  found  the  task  most  irksome,  and  he  discussed 
it  with  me  from  time  to  time,  finally  deciding  to 
render  certain  Rabelaisian  phrases  into  something 
less  offensive  in  English — into  common  cleanly 
blasphemies  at  least.  Six  of  us  were  engaged 
with  him  in  translating  the  best  known  of  Zola's 
novels,  and  like  hooked  fish  we  struggled  desper- 
ately to  escape  the  ultra-literal  in  places,  but  like 
a  cool  trout-fisher  Mr  Teixeira  de  Mattos,  our 
brilliant  chief,  held  us  up  rigorously  round  the 
editorial  boat,  never  once  allowing  one  of  us  to 
dart  off  into  the  depths  of  British  decency  for 
which  we  longed.     We  had  the  fearful  example 

96 


THE  LETTERS  97 

of  Mr  Vizetelly  before  our  eyes.  He  had  been 
prosecuted  some  years  earlier  for  his  translations 
of  "  Nana "  and  one  or  two  others  of  Zola's 
novels,  but  we  were  enrolled  as  a  learned  group, 
"The  Lutetian  Society,''  and  we  were  writing  for 
scholars,  and  were  protected  by  our  manifest 
sincerity  and  by  prohibitive  prices. 

Our  books  as  remainders  drifted  off  finally  to  the 
States,  where  to  my  horror  "  Nana  "  reappears 
as  a  huge  and,  I  am  told,  lavishly  illustrated 
production  in  "  The  Millionaires'  Library,"  or  some 
such  edition.  The  poor  translator  gets  nothing 
by  this  vast  act  of  appropriation  save  annoyance 
and  nightmare.  America,  of  course,  is  the 
honestest  of  countries.  "Was  it  not  there  that 
George  Washington  ''  never  told  a  lie  "  ?  Well, 
well !  I  wonder  if  "  La  Terre  "  has  kept  "  Nana  " 
company. 

Dowson  writes  in  April : 

*'  Cher  Vieux, — Wie  gehts  ?  I  have  been  so 
overwhelmed  with  Zola,  and  also  disorganised  by 
the  sudden  death  of  my  housekeeper,  and  thrilled 
by  other  things,  that  I  have  deferred  all  writing. 
But  I  have  wondered  how  it  fared  with  you  and 
when  we  should  meet.  I  have  not  done  more  than 
340  pages.  .  .  .  Would  you  make  my  excuses  to 
your  mother  for  not  having  answered  her  note, 
and  thank  her  for  the  symbolical  stones  according 
to  the  Polish  tradition.  I  am  intensely  interested 
in  every  kind  of  that  symbolism.  ...  I  suppose 


98  ERNEST  DOWSON 

you  are  rurally  at  your  ease  now,  so  far  as  it  is 
possible  to  be  at  your  ease  and  translate  Zola. 
I  have  seen  hardly  anyone  but  Jepson,  who  dines 
with  me  almost  daily,  and  I  fancy  derives  a  good 
deal  of  satisfaction  from  studying  my  trans- 
parently imbecile  condition.  It  is  a  great  thing 
that  so  delightful  a  person  should  at  last  have  seen 
the  absurdity  of  living  in  Barbadoes.  Are  you 
going  to  the  Yellow  Book  dinner  ?  I  shall,  I 
expect,  but  I  feel  that  I  ought  to  go  to  no  dinners 
until  this  p3n:amid  is  pulled  down.  I  have  had 
and  returned  my  Rhymers'  proofs.  They  have 
chucked  my  Lady's  Hands,  and  my  Terre  Promise, 
i/  in  favour  of  two  verses  which  I  like  less.  Mine 
will  be  a  very  poor  show.  I  hope  they  will  bind 
the  book  decently  this  time.  Are  you  by  the  way 
an  astrologer  ?  I  begin  to  think  that  in  my 
horoscope  the  first  fortnight  in  April  must  be 
bound  up  with  my  fortunes  very  closely,  critically 
or  fatally,  or  perilously.  Let  me  hear  from  you  ! 
Are  you  at  Blackheath  next  Sunday  ?  But  even 
if  you  were,  the  chances  are  against  my  being  able 
to  leave  my  corvee.  These  be  parlous  times.  .  .  . 
How  do  you  like  the  appended  ?  " 

Then,  like  a  rare  flower  springing  suddenly  and 
unexpectedly  in  some  familiar  coign  of  garden, 
appears  the  MS.  of  his  lovely  poem :  "  Quid 
non  speremus,  amantes  ?  "  It  has  been  printed 
on  page  55  of  his  **  Verses  "  (1896),  and  is 
dedicated  to  Mr  Arthur  Moore.     In  the  letter  it 


THE  LETTERS  99 

is  dated  9th  April  1894,  for  he  dated  his  poems,  in 
most  cases,  and,  for  his  friends,  wrote  them  out 
meticulously  as  they  afterwards  appeared  in  print. 

"  As  man  aspires  and  falls,  yet  a  soul  springs 
Out  of  the  agony  of  flesh,  at  last ; 
So  love,  that  flesh  enthralls,  shall  rise  on  wings 
Soul-centred  when  the  rule  of  flesh  is  passed." 

I  am  no  astrologer,  and  could  not  then  have 
foretold  my  friend's  death,  so  full  was  he  of 
interest  in  life.  He  died — not  in  April — but  on 
2ist  February  1900,  refusing,  as  it  were,  to  live 
beyond  the  decade  which  has  been  somewhat 
arbitrarily  assigned  to  him.  But  there  is  a  pathos 
in  this  early  reference  to  a  month  being  bound  up 
"  critically  or  fatally  "  with  his  fortunes. 

Of  his  work  as  a  translator  much  has  been 
written.  It  was  forced  work — not  his  best.  His 
"Terre,"  for  instance,  is  pot-boiler  achievement. 
Nor  do  I  care  for  other  pieces,  such  as  "The  Girl 
with  the  Golden  Eyes,''  which  reappears  now  and 
then  in  booksellers'  windows — Balzac  wrote  the 
original  as  a  pot-boiler — together  with  Dowson 
MSS.,  valued  at  a  guinea  apiece.  What  a  supreme 
mockery !  During  both  their  lives,  latterly,  the  late 
Mr  Leonard  Smithers  is  said  to  have  paid  the  poet 
thirty  shillings  a  week  for  all  the  work  he  could  do 
for  him,  including  a  large  amount  of  corvee  trans- 
lation. When,  if  ever,  the  Judgment  Books  are 
unrolled,  it  is  not  the  East  End  sweated  women 
who    will    have    the    first   say,    but    rather   the 


100  ERNEST  DOWSON 

plagiarised  and  pirated  authors,  the  translators, 
the  poor  scholars,  in  the  leash  of  the  illiterate  and 
the  vulgar  !     What  an  army  they  will  form  ! 

Late  in  the  summer  of  1894  we  were  at  Sandgate 
in  Kent,  and  there  the  poet,  accompanied  by  an 
accomplished  editor,  visited  us  from  Saturday  to 
Monday.  We  bathed  in  the  sea,  and,  there  being 
a  great  run  on  the  bathing-machines,  were  forced 
to  occupy  one  conjointly.  Dear  old  Ernest  Dowson 
was  no  hero  in  the  water,  and  I  retain  a  distinct 
recollection  of  his  clinging  to  the  wheel  of  the 
machine,  while  the  chopping  waves  broke  over  him, 
and  he  kept  his  head  up  pathetically,  well  out  of 
their  reach.  A  wind  blew  that  hot  morning,  and 
re-entering  our  narrow  dressing-room  before  the 
others  had  done  bathing,  I  was  surprised  by  a  great 
grey  fluttering  of  scapularies  on  every  vantage 
point  of  the  hanging  garments  !  I  was  reminded 
of  this,  of  late  years,  in  the  crypt  of  that  old 
chapel  at  Warwick  where  generations  of  the 
famous  local  noble  line  lie  stacked  on  shelves, 
coffined  amid  much  greyness  and  many  cobwebby 
flappings.  Sir  Walter  Scott,  by  the  by,  urged  his 
son's  wife  to  visit  the  Warwick  chapel,  but  did  he 
think  of  the  crypt  ? 

In  the  afternoon  the  poet  was  so  much  himself 
that  we  actually  "  walked  on  the  Leas  "  at 
Folkestone  among  the  conventional  throng.  I 
remember  he  knew  all  about  a  professonial  beauty 
there  promenading  with  a  stockbroker.  It  was 
more  than  I  did. 


THE  CRISIS 

So  far  my  friend  had  been  happy  enough,  and 
though,  of  late  months,  his  week-end  visits  to  us 
had  been  becoming  fewer — ^for  I  remember  that 
the  imagined  intrusion  with  Mr  Jepson  marked 
a  rather  rare  occasion — our  intercourse  had  been 
kept  up  fairly  well.  But,  in  the  latter  months  of 
1894,  and  throughout  1895,  troubles  and  tragedies 
began  to  accumulate,  though  in  the  absence  of 
notes  and  documents  I  am  now  not  too  sure  of 
dates. 

Pathologically  speaking,  my  poor  friend  was 
doomed  to  die  of  phthisis.  That  disease  runs  a 
course  of  some  six  years.  He  died  in  1900,  and 
already  in  1894  it  seemed  to  have  got  him  in  its 
clutches.  His  nervousness  in  the  sea  may  have 
been  due  to  ill  health,  and  we  have  more  than  once 
read  of  his  very  severe  colds,  which  he  shook  off 
with  difficulty.  He  had  never  taken  much  care  of 
himself.  The  uncomfortable  nights  on  sofas,  the 
unwise  and  innutritions  dinners  he  ate,  his  fond- 
ness for  fantastic  vigils — all  these  were  contributory 
causes  of  his  final  malady.  As  to  vigils,  I  remember 
introducing  him  to  Lionel  Johnson,  when  the 
latter  first  came  to  town.  They  sat  up  in  my 
rooms  till  a  late  hour,  and  then,  entranced  with 

lOI 


102  ERNEST  DOWSON 

one  another's  conversation,  went  off  to  Johnson's 
chambers,  where  they  sat  up  all  night.  Again, 
on  a  visit  with  him  to  Cambridge,  he  insisted  on 
keeping  an  all-night  vigil  in  Mr  Sayle's  garden. 
I  heard  my  friends'  voices  till  the  small  hours, 
when  I  fell  asleep.  And  now  Mr  Arthur  Moore 
tells  me  that  when  they  first  met,  at  Queen's 
College,  Oxford,  in  1886  or  1887,  they  too  watched 
the  whole  night  out. 

But  there  were  psychological  causes,  too.  His 
father  and  mother,  restlessly  wandering  from  home 
to  home,  ended  by  taking  up  their  abode  at  Lea, 
in  Kent,  where  the  poet  had  been  born.  He  used 
to  walk  over  Blackheath  to  see  us.  On  one 
occasion  I  remember  seeing  his  mother  saying 
good-bye  to  him  and  flitting  away,  a  shadowy 
figure,  near  a  little  grove  of  trees  that  fronted  our 
house.  She  would  not  visit  her  son's  friends — 
there  was  evidently  trouble  in  the  air. 

Of  the  sudden  deaths  of  the  poet's  father  and 
mother  I  am  expressly  forbidden  to  write,  and 
can  only  state  here  that  the  one  shock  following 
at  no  long  interval  of  time  upon  the  other  shook 
him  to  the  roots  of  his  being. 

I  trust  I  am  guilty  of  no  indiscretion  when  I  say 
that  the  old  dock  had  latterly  been  a  great  source 
of  trouble.  The  poet  told  me  of  a  mortgage,  for 
no  very  great  amount,  it  is  true,  and  of  the  fore- 
man being  the  looming  creditor,  who  could  only 
have  been  paid  off  if  prosperity  had  returned  to 
the  Thames  after  the  dock  strikes. 


THE  CRISIS  103 

I  never  could  discover  how  Ernest  Dowson 
settled  with  this  man  after  his  father's  death. 
I  have  an  idea  that,  growing  utterly  sick  of  his 
business  troubles,  he  simply  shut  the  dockyard 
gate  behind  him,  and,  like  Tolstoy,  sought  by  this 
simple  process  to  disembarrass  himself  of  real 
estate,  cobwebbed  over  by  deeds  and  liabilities. 
His  affairs  remain  a  mystery  to  this  day,  though 
I  am  told  he  need  never  for  a  moment  have  been 
in  need  of  funds.  The  dock,  as  Mr  Arthur  Moore 
tells  me,  was  certainly  sold,  in  1898  perhaps. 

Other  troubles  fell  upon  him.  His  bright  young 
brother,  so  he  told  me,  then  grown  almost  to  man's 
estate,  met  with  failure  in  Canada — the  fate  of 
so  many  gentlemen's  sons.  He  walked  huge 
distances — met  with  numberless  adventures.  And 
now  his  cousin,  Mr  Gerald  Hoole,  writing  from 
the  Isle  of  Skye  in  February,  1914,  has  informed 
me  that  Rowland  died  of  phthisis  in  America 
now  more  than  a  year  ago.  The  hereditary  com- 
plaint has  thus  taken  both  brothers,  and  a  whole 
lovable  family  is  swept  away  into  the  world  of 
memories. 

And  then  the  love  affair  !  We  will  cut  a  long 
story  short  by  saying  simply — it  failed. 

Consumption  induces  the  feverish  spes  phthisica 
of  the  old  physicians  :  it  heightens  the  appetites 
that  prey  upon  the  wasted  body.  The  elder 
Mr  Dowson,  who  had  the  story  from  Severn,  told 
me  that  this  was  so  in  the  case  of  Keats. 

I  am  not ''  out  "  to  detract  from  Ernest  Dowson, 


104  ERNEST  DOWSON 

but  to  defend.  If,  later  on,  he  erred,  he  did  so 
under  an  accumulation  of  griefs  worthy  of  the 
^  old  Greek  tragedies.  In  small  families  strokes  of 
Fate  fall  heavily  even  on  the  Philistine,  but  when 
they  rain  on  the  frail,  the  exquisitely  feeling,  the 
imaginative,  the  very  loving,  and  the  unstable, 
they  crush. 

The  beginning  of  the  days  of  confirmed  ill 
health  and  prolonged  mental  suffering  is  perhaps 
indicated  in  a  phrase  which  occurs  in  a  note 
dated  from  6  Featherstone  Buildings,  High 
Holborn.  This  apparently  was  the  first  station 
in  the  poet's  via  dolorosa  by  way  of  Paris  and 
Brittany  to  the  last  phase  at  Catford  under 
Mr  Sherard's  roof.  He  chose  Featherstone 
Buildings,  I  believe,  because  of  poor  Chatterton's 
supposed  residence  ^  there  long  ago.  He  writes 
of  his  ''abominable  procrastination,"  and  says: 

"  My  excuse  for  not  having  come  to  you  on  the 
Sunday  I  daresay  you  will  find  equally  inexcusable 
but  it  was  simply  because  I  was  in  such  a  state  of 
nervous  and  physical  disability  that  I  had  not  the 
•faintest  recollection  of  having  any  engagement.  .  .  . 
I  expect  to  be  in  this  country,  much  as  it  tortures 
and  maddens  me,  till  Christmas  or  the  New  Year." 

That  New  Year  must  have  been  the  first  day  of 
1896.     "  E.  D.  went  to  Paris,"  writes  Mr  Arthur 
Moore  (3rd  February  1914),  "  with  Norreys  Connell 
1  Chatterton  died  in  Brooke  Street,  Holborn. 


THE  CRISIS  105 

in  December  1895.  ...  It  was  very  near  the  time 
of  Verlaine's  death/ 'which  occurred  on  8th  January 
1896.  The  two  authors  lived  for  a  time  at 
No.  214  Rue  St  Jacques.  Early  in  1896  Ernest 
Dowson  went  to  Pont-Aven  and  stayed  for  some 
months,  Mr  Moore  joining  him  for  a  fortnight  in 
August.  Of  the  poet's  life  in  Brittany  I  give  some 
account  in  the  following  chapter. 

It  should  be  mentioned  here  that  he  was  in 
Dieppe  in  the  summer  of  1895,  and  that,  though 
troubles  had  rendered  him  silent  as  a  correspondent, 
he  was  still  able  to  live  among  civilised  people,  of 
whom  many,  including  the  late  Mr  Conder,  and 
several  artists  and  their  wives,  and  others,  were 
then  in  the  ancient  town.  Mr  Arthur  Moore 
visited  him,  and  saw  him  again  when  he  removed 
to  Arques,  the  quaint  village  near  the  prim  forest 
of  that  name,  and  the  old  romantic  chateau. 


DOWSON  IN  BRITTANY 

"  I  THINK  he  was  happiest  in  the  remote  Breton 
villages/  whither  he  now  and  again  withdrew 
himself,  from  which  he  wrote  his  most  delightful 
letters.  They  used  to  give  me  the  impression  that 
the  world  went  well  with  him  there — as  well,  at 
any  rate,  as  it  ever  could  go  with  him." 

So  wrote  Mr  Edgar  Jepson  in  his  just  account  of 
''The  Real  Ernest  Dowson,"  published,  as  I  have 
mentioned  before,  in  The  Academy,  in  November 
1907. 

Brittany  was  to  Ernest  Dowson  what  Ireland 
was  to  Lionel  Johnson.  Both  poets  found  in  those 
dilapidated  delightful  countries  what  cities  and 
orderly  champaigns  do  not  supply  to  the  spirit  of 
the  timid,  the  imaginative  and,  in  Johnson's  case, 
the  retrospective  and  religious. 

"Bridge  Dock,  Limehouse,  E. 
"June  13/92. 
"  C.  Dowson  and  Son. 
'*  Telegraphic  Address : 

"Dowson,  Limehouse. 
"  MoN  CHER  Victor, — I  hope  you  will  consider 
the  Breton  journey  seriously  :    Moore,  I  am  sure, 
would  be  very  charmed.     In  case  you  decide  upon 

^  The  poet  knew  Brittany  well.  He  went  a  walking  tour 
there  in  the  summer  of  1890  with  Mr  A.  C.  Hillier,  to  whom 
I  introduced  him. 

106 


DOWSON  IN  BRITTANY        107 

it  I  send  you  a  sort  of  itinerary  which  you  may  find 
useful,  although  you  will  very  likely  vary  it." 

There  follows  the  clearest  possible  plan  of  a  tour 
right  round  "  old  black  Brittany/'  which  we 
adhered  to  religiously  on  our  wedding  journey 
and  greatly  enjoyed. 

Dowson  had  never  visited  Carnac,  and,  in  a  kind 
of  blind  obedience  to  him,  we  missed  that  great 
druidic  relic,  but  we  went  to  Scaer,  which  he  had 
perhaps  not  visited  either,  and,  under  the  guidance 
of  old  M.  Yves  Rodallec,  Flaubert's  host,  saw  the 
wonderful  three-days  ''Pardon,"  with  its  wrest- 
ling, gavotte-dancing,  and  incomparable  costumes 
from  many  villages.  I  have  never  seen  such 
costumes,  even  in  Alsace,  and  am  told  that  they 
are  not  discarded  yet.  But  since  my  informants 
did  not  know  the  country  in  1892, 1  cannot  rightly 
estimate  the  value  of  their  evidence.  Certain  it  is 
that  the  Picards  have  abandoned  what  costume 
they  had  in  1883,  when,  at  Ault,  on  the  coast,  the 
little  girls  appeared  at  mass  in  a  garb  exquisite  in 
its  old-world  simplicity. 

"  Through  deepening  dusk  one  just  can  see 

The  httle  white-capped  heads  that  move 
In  time  to  Unes  turned  rhythmically 
And  starred  with  names  of  love." 

In  1897  the  little  ''  lint-haired  girls "  wore 
wretched  sailor  hats,  shabby  frocks,  and  looked  for 
all  the  world  like  our  own  Board  School  children. 


io8  ERNEST  DOWSON 

How  strange  it  is  that  the  populace  in  its  ascent 
sheds  off  its  hereditary  graces  as  so  many  marks 
of  bondage  !  In  England,  and  still  more  in  the 
land  of  Mrs  Wiggs's  cabbage-patch,  Demos  has 
made  itself  unutterably  ugly.  The  disastrous 
little  cricketing  cap  worn  by  our  old  cottage  wives 
is  an  approximation  to  costume,  for  it  is  likely  to 
become  stereotyped,  but  how  compare  it  with  the 
many-shaped  and  wonderfully  laundered  coiffes  of 
the  Breton  women  ?  They  are  best,  I  think,  at  Dol, 
but  admirable  everywhere.  In  Scotland,  the 
quaint  old  men's  "bonnets"  have  given  way  to 
the  odious -and  all-pervading  "cloth  cap."  The 
"bowler  " reigns  in  Italy.  In  Alsace,  however,  you 
still  see  the  fine  old  noble  dress,  the  huge  archaic 
bows,  black  in  token  of  a  long  mourning.  A 
year  ago,  in  September  1913,  when  I  came  down 
from  the  top  of  the  cathedral,  where  I  had  been 
sitting  three  hundred  feet  up,  among  the  little 
late  Gothic  figures  of  a  shouting  bear,  a  praying 
lady  and  a  burgher,  all  gazing  upwards  to  the 
aerial  summit  with  its  cross,  there  met  my  gaze 
a  group  of  stolid  little  peasant  girls,  thick-booted, 
darkly  dressed,  holding  in  sunburnt  hands  huge 
disproportionate  umbrellas,  with,  on  top  of  all, 
the  vast  august  black  bows  of  the  Alsacienne. 
They  stood  against  the  fretted  red-sandstone  wall, 
waiting,  grave-eyed,  for  their  friends  to  join  them 
before  going  afoot  into  the  long  flat  stretches  of  the 
Plaine,  among  the  maize  crops,  the  vineyards  and 
the  tobacco  fields.     Peasants  are  Mediaeval  people; 


DOWSON  IN  BRITTANY        109 

they  choose  immemorial  places  of  rendezvous. 
They  either  have  no  watches  or  their  watches,  of 
a  turnip  pattern,  do  not  go.  So,  doubtless,  these 
damsels  had  been  told  to  meet  their  friends, 
vaguely,  towards  the  setting  of  the  sun.  It 
mattered  not  that  they  were  at  the  trysting-place 
hours  too  early.  They  were,  I  fancy,  of  the 
kindred  of  him  who  went  into  a  bookseller's  shop 
and  cried  : 

"  I  want  the  book  !  " 

"  What  book,  sir  ?  " 

"  That  sort  of  a  little  yellow  book  !  " 

This  is  not  so  much  a  digression  as  an  attempt 
to  set  forth  the  spirit  of  peasantry,  which  is  the 
same  in  many  countries,  from  the  land  of  Tolstoi 
or  Kipling's  India  to  Connemara.  The  cowboys 
lack  that  spirit,  by  the  by.  ''  The  Virginian  " 
is  not  of  this  ancient  kindred .  Into  the  old  peasant 
spirit  Dowson  entirely  entered  in  the  Brittany  he 
loved  so  well. 

'*  Mon  cher,"  I  can  hear  him  saying,  ''  that 
is  the  tapestry  that  escapes  me  and  that  I  never 
weave  !  " 

"It  is  nothing  wonderfull,"  one  might  have 
made  reply  years  ago,  "but  you  and  I  see 
differently.  You  are  static  :  your  figures  and 
loves  are  of  all  ages.  You,  in  one  sense,  belong 
to  the  age  of  Tibullus,  Catullus,  and  the  rest  of  the 
classics.  Others  are  little  unconsidered  roman- 
ticists of  the  school  of  Longfellow.  You,  en 
philosophe,  suffer  from  the  sorrows  of  the  world  : 


•^ 


no  ERNEST  DOWSON 

others,  apart  from  family  memories,  would  be 
half  consoled,  on  their  death-beds,  by,  say,  the 
tune  of  a  bag-pipe,  or  the  sight  of  a  corn-hopper 
from  Alsace,  parti-coloured  and  semi-Oriental  in 
execution  and  design,  or  the  memory  of  dancing 
Algeriennes,  or  of  quaint  childish  Bavarian  women, 
dancing,  too,  in  a  mediaeval  contre-danse,  or  even 
of  screeching  Anamites  in  the  Paris  Exposition  of 
1889." 

He  would  have  mused,  pouted  out  his  lips,  lit 
another  appalling  Vevey.  But,  in  his  demeanour, 
there  would  have  been  that  sympathy  which,  in 
these  latter  years,  we  miss — increasingly. 

His  letter  continues  :  "  I  hope  once  more  that 
you  will  think  of  it :  I  am  sure  that  you  would 
both  of  you  be  charmed  with  the  country.  The 
formal  table  d'hote  of  Trouville,  Cannes,  Paris, 
Dinan,  etc.,  is  unknown.  ...  I  have  a  neuralgic 
disorder  which  swells  my  face  abominably,  so  that 
unless  there  is  a  speedy  improvement  you  will  find 
me  at  home  in  the  evening  soon.     A  hientot  done." 

In  July,  1892,  he  wrote : 

"  Caro  Vittorio  Mio, — I  have  only  just  realised 
that  you  are  finally  departed.  .  .  .  And  is  one 
ever  to  see  you  again  ?  At  any  rate  let  me  hear 
from  you  speedily,  and  of  your  plans.  I  go  to 
Brittany  a  week  later  than  was  arranged.  .  .  . 
so  there  is  all  the  more  chance  of  our  meeting. 
We  shall  not  be  more  than  a  week  at  Le  Faouet, 


DOWSON  IN  BRITTANY        iii 

whence  we  proceed  into  quite  unexplored  barbar- 
isms to  the  extreme  west  of  Finisterre :  but  we 
ought  to  run  across  each  other,  when  we  are 
returning.  I  wish  I  was  going  under  your 
circumstances.  However  I  must  possess  my  soul 
in  patience.  .  .  . 

"  P.S. — Even  if  we  happen  to  miss  in  Bretagne, 
you  7nust  visit  Faouet  :  on  the  left-hand  side  of 
the  market-place  (looking  East)  from  the  Lion 
d'Or  observe  the  house  which,  whatever  happen, 
I  intend  to  live  in." 

"  Au  Lion  d'Or,  Le  Faouet. 

"  Mintiit,  Wednesday  (in  August,  1892). 
"  Carissime, — I  am  charmed  to  hear  that  you 
are  in  the  sacred  land.  I  also  adore  the  granite 
and  the  cathedral  of  Dol.  Alas  !  that  we  are  just 
leaving  for  that  direction.  We  hoped  that  you 
would  arrive  here  before  we  left,  but  now  you  are 
not,  and  at  4.0  in  the  morning  we  depart  for 
Pontivy,  en  route  for  Lamballe,  etc.  ...  I  leave 
this  note  on  the  chance  of  your  reaching  here 
before  we  meet ;  but  I  hope  that  either  at 
Lamballe  or  Dol  we  may  rencounter.  ...  If  you 
come  here  let  me  entreat  you  to  take  a  rough  but 
most  delightful  walk  up  the  hill  opposite  St  Barbe. 
When  you  have  seen  the  savage  beauty  of  the  view 
you  get  at  about  the  end  of  the  range,  I  hope  you 
will  be  as  devout  a  Faouettois  as  I  am.  No  more 
now  :  we  have  but  3  hours'  slumber. 


112  ERNEST  DOWSON 

"  Alas  I  shall  be  in  London  this  day  week.  But 
I  shall  return  and  live  here.  Some  day  you  must 
do  likewise. 

"  If  you  have  time  to  send  your  impressions  of 
this  place  to  me,  your  letter  will  be  to  me  even  as 
the  saving  draught  of  water  to  the  traveller  in  a 
thirsty  land  !  " 

We  "  missed  "  in  Brittany,  though  we  reached 
Le  Faouet  eventually  after  a  memorable  journey 
in  a  voiture,  as  the  little  diligence  of  those  parts 
is  still  called.  Le  Faouet  ("  the  beech-tree  ")  is 
famous  for  its  memories  of  the  Chouans,  who  rang 
their  tocsin,  calling  the  faithful  to  arms,  in  the 
little  hill-top  belfry  of  Sainte  Barbe.  It  has  been 
painted  in  a  well-known  picture.  The  guests  of 
the  Lion  d'Or  were  full  of  the  recently  flown 
visitors,  and  the  little  Bretonne,  who  waited  on  us 
in  her  stiff  mediaeval  jupe  and  coiffe,  constantly 
quoted  Monsieur  "  Douzeuc,"  the  Armorican 
word  for  "  twelve,"  which  was  the  nearest  shot 
she  could  make  at  *'  Dowson." 

We  heard  many  old  stories  of  Chouans  and 
wolves,  and  eventually,  travelling  on  through 
Scaer  and  Carhaix,  were  one  afternoon  scurrying 
along  interminable  roads  to  Morlaix,  in  a  pre- 
historic voiture,  when  we  stopped  to  refresh  our 
driver  with  potato  spirit  in  a  roadside  farmhouse. 
The  man  who  served  us  was  a  grim  old  long-haired 
Breton,  and  he  had  ancient  flint-lock  guns  on  his 
walls,  which  looked  as  if  they  had  done  service  in 


DOWSON  IN  BRITTANY        113 

the  cause  of  Choiiannerie.  The  floor  of  his  large 
kitchen  and  living-room  was  of  beaten  earth,  but 
he  possessed  fine  old  furniture,  and  on  the  top  of 
a  cupboard-bedstead  reclined,  in  full  local  costume, 
coiffe  and  all,  a  sick  woman.  She  seemed  in  great 
pain  and  was  very  pale  and  restless,  but  not  much 
notice  was  taken  of  her. 

"  Oui,  elle  est  malade,"  the  others  said.  Seeing 
us,  however,  she  reared  up  on  her  elbow — the 
whole  thing  was  very  grim — and  joined  in  the 
conversation. 

Strange  that  Monsieur  et  Madame  were  the 
second  batch  of  English  people  that  they  had 
seen  in  their  lives,  and  that  the  others  had 
appeared  only  about  ten  days  before  !  These 
others  had  been  two  Englishmen,  travelling  in 
an  opposite  direction  to  ours — tres  presses,  a  ce 
qui  parait. 

Owing  to  my  liberality  in  the  matter  of  potato 
spirit,  I  was  the  grand  seigneur  oi  the  occasion. 
I,  therefore,  cross-examined  the  poor  invalid 
carefully. 

What  were  the  travellers  like  ?  But  yes,  one 
was  "  carre,"  or  was  the  word  "  trappu  "  ?  Mr 
Arthur  Moore,  whom  his  friends  know  as  a  well 
set-up  man,  will  forgive  my  quotation  of  this  poor 
invalid.  Peasants  have  an  extraordinary  knack 
of  offending,  without  in  the  least  meaning  to  do  so. 
They  are  always  very  grave,  literal,  and  interested 
in  what  they  report. 

The  other  traveller — gentlemen  they  manifestly 

H 


114  ERNEST  DOWSON 

were  not,  for  they  were  afoot — "  etait  plus 
chetifr 

We  fancied  we  had  spotted  the  travellers  at 
once,  and  subsequently  verified  our  guess. 

Would  that  this  could  have  happened  some 
years  later,  and  that  it  could  have  been  my  last 
news  of  my  friend  !  I  should  like  to  think  of  him 
always  as  travelling  off  into  infinity  in  a  land  of 
primitives.  At  the  time  of  this  little  episode,  I 
remember  thinking  of  the  Esquimaux,  who  told 
the  Franklin  search-party  that,  some  winters  ago, 
they  had  seen  white  men  travelling  by  in  a  long 
line,  apparently  hungry. 

"  And  why  did  not  you  feed  them  ?  " 

"  Because  we  had  nothing  to  eat  ourselves." 

Once  again  I  heard  from  him  at  the  same 
address,  and  then  it  was  his  last  letter  to  me, 
which,  at  the  time  I  received  it,  struck  me  as 
lacking  in  the  customary  cordiality.  But  it  is  as 
kind  as  ever,  though  melancholy  and  valedictory. 
With  the  exception  of  one  post-card,  written  in 
February,  I  had  not  heard  from  him  for  an  age. 

"  MoN  CHER  ViEUX  [he  had  then  written  from 
the  Hotel  Gloanec,  at  Pont-Aven], — Many  months 
have  I  meant  to  write  to  you  and  give  you  of 
my  wandering  news.  But  arriving  here,  after 
passing  through  these  Breton  lands,  which  are  so 
associated  with  you,  makes  it  incumbent  on  me  to 
send  at  least  a  post-card.     I  will  follow  it  up  with 


DOWSON  IN  BRITTANY        115 

a  letter  when  I  am  settled  down,  but  write  to  me 
in  the  meantime.  I  shall  stay  here  at  least  a 
month.  I  wish  you  could  come  too  and  leave 
your  fogs  to  bask  in  baking  sunshine  as  I  did  this 
afternoon,  taking  my  coffee  in  an  arbour  in  a 
garden  of  my  hotel  at  Quimperle.  I  feel  I  shall 
do  much  work  here  :  it  is  an  adorable  place  and, 
much  as  I  love  Paris,  where  I  have  lived  now  some 
time,  I  felt  rested  and  restored  to  some  prospect 
of  reasonable  health  directly  I  came  here.  Write 
and  believe  me  in  spite  of  all  my  short-comings 
as  a  correspondent,  always  yours." 

As  one  who  dreads  the  slipping  out  of  sight  of 
a  friendship  as  greatly  as  he  dreads  the  death  of  a 
friend,  I  wrote  at  once,  and  tried  to  revive  the 
pleasant  old  exchanges  of  letters,  but  the  sun  had 
ceased  to  shine  for  poor  Ernest  Dowson,  and  with 
a  note  of  pain  came  the  final  letter  in  May,  1896. 
It  was  a  shock,  almost  a  blow,  however  kindly  and 
calm  its  phrases. 

"  My  Dear  Victor, — I  am  ashamed  of  myself 
for  not  having  long  ago  answered  your  charming 
letter,  from  Pont-Aven,  but  constant  ill  health  and 
depression  of  spirits  have  made  me  a  sorry  corre- 
spondent. At  least,  I  will  not  go  away  from  this 
place,  with  which  we  both  have  had  pleasant 
associations,  without  putting  myself  in  touch  with 
you.  You  will  remember  the  room  (salle  a  manger) 
in  which  I  am  writing.  This  visit  of  mine  has  not 
been  a  success  ;    I  came  up  from  Pont-Aven  only 


ii6  ERNEST  DOWSON 

two  days  ago,  to  see  if  the  change  of  air — ^from 
Pont-Aven    to    Faouet    is    really    an    enormous 
change,  though  it  may  sound  ridiculous  to  you — 
would  do  me  any  good,  and  to  spend  a  fortnight. 
But  the  ineffable  tristesse  of  the  place  is  too  much 
for  me  and  I  am  returning  to  what  is  more  or  less 
my  permanent  home  and  address  (Hotel  Gloanec, 
Pont-Aven,    Finistere)     to-morrow.       Faouet    is 
charming  in  the  daytime.     One  can  work  without 
interruption,  and,  tired  of  work,  one  can  bask  in 
the  blazing  sunshine  by  Sainte-Barbe.     But  the 
evenings,  the  cold,  bleak  desolation  of  the  evenings ! 
Perhaps  Pont-Aven,  where  I  know  everybody,  and 
have  many  friends,  French,  English  and  Breton, 
has  spoilt  me  ;   perhaps  Le  Faouet  has  changed, 
more  likely  I  have.     But  I  have  not  the  courage 
to  stay  here  by  myself.     It  is  more  beautiful, 
however,  now  than  in  the  full  summer.     There  is 
no  one  in  either  hotel.     Our  old  friend  Jeanne  has 
retired  and  Madame  Mitouard  (who  asks  to  be 
remembered  to  you)  is  shaky  on  her  pins.     Marie- 
Joseph  has  gone  to  Paris.     Miss  or  Meese  Rose, 
who  spoke  English,  is  post-mistress  or  tobacconist 
at  Vannes.     The  two  little  twins,  whom  Moore 
and  I  admired  much  at  the  billiard,  are  grown 
into  ugly  and  farouches  girls  of  twelve.     And  the 
two  trees,  whom  ( ?  which)  Moore  christened  the 
'  Sisters  Limejuice,'  are  cut  down.     Eheu  fugaces  ! 
But  it  is  probably  I,  who  have  changed,  more 
than  Faouet,  and  doubtless  if  I  was  here  with  you 
and  Moore  I  should  love  the  place  again.     But  in 


DOWSON  IN  BRITTANY        117 

my  sick  and  sorry  old  age  I  begin  to  be  dependent 
on  society :  so  I  am  off  to  Pont-Aven  apres  demain, 
and  there  I  hope  you  will  write  to  me. 

"  I  hope  you  and  yours  prosper.  It  is  long  since 
I  have  heard  news  of  you.  My  poems  will  be  out 
in  a  day  or  two — perhaps  are  out  now.  You 
must  forgive  the  freedom  I  have  taken  with  yours 
and  your  wife's  name  in  my  inscription  to  my 
poem  on  Marion.  I  am  full  up  with  work  of  various 
kinds  and  I  suppose  I  ought  to  be  satisfied  with 
myself,  for  it  is  all  work  that  pays.  But  as  I  have 
no  lungs  left  to  speak  of,  an  apology  for  a  liver,  and 
a  broken  heart  I  may  be  permitted  to  rail  a  little 
sometimes. 

"  Write  to  me  soon,  mon  Vieux.  I  shall  be  at 
Pont-Aven  for  two  or  three  months  and  winter 
probably  in  Paris.  Smith,  Smithers  and  Moore 
are  my  only  regular  correspondents.  Johnson 
sends  me  messages,  with  promises  of  speedy 
letters,  but  has  not  written  as  yet  since  I  started 
on  my  wanderings.  With  J —  I  have  seriously 
quarrelled  ;  and  I  am  afraid  H —  is  annoyed  with 
me  because  I  have  published  my  verses  out  of  the 

series.     writes  to  me  fairly  often,  friendly 

letters,  which  give  me  sleepless  nights  and  cause 
me  to  shed  morbid  and  puerile  tears.  But  she 
is  very  kind.  With  all  remembrances  to  all, 
affectionately  yours, 

"  (Signed)   Ernest  Dowson.'' 

It  was  scarcely  my  fault  that  he  had  not  heard 


ii8  ERNEST  DOWSON 

from  me.  I  had  fancied  that  my  long  and  urgent 
letter  of  February  must  have  bored  him.  Silence 
is  often  a  poignant  rebuff  to  a  man  schooled 
during  years  of  youth  in  the  endurance  of  neglect 
or  the  reception  of  snubs,  merited  sometimes, 
oftener  imaginary,  painful  always  !  Moreover, 
I  had  not  known  where  to  write  to  him.  To  us 
he  had  been  becoming  a  mystery.  Art  had 
been  engulfing  him,  and  Art  is  an  even  subtler 
estranger  than  faddishness,  its  modern  substitute. 


THE  LAST  PHASE 

His  book  came  out.  It  made  his  name  as  a  poet. 
It  is  mentioned  next  to  mine — ^we  are  described 
as  Rhymers,  and  I  am  proud  of  the  juxtaposition 
— in  Mr  Ernest  Rhys's  ''Literary  Causerie/'  pre- 
fixed to  the  ''  Literary  Year-Book  "  of  1897. 

This  first  volume  of  "  Verses  " — how  diffident  the 
title  ! — contains   all  that  is  finest  in  his  scanty 
/  poetic  output.     "  Non  sum  qualis  eram  bonae  sub 
\  regno  Cynarae  "  ^  rearrested  the  attention  at  once. 
<!  It  has  been  rightly  called  of  late  ''the  poem  of 
/■    the  Decadence."  Jt  dates  from  1891 :  I  have  no 
/    manuscript  of  it,  as  I  mentioned  before.     Had 
^  it  been  written  after  his  troubles  had  begun  to 
thicken,  it  would  have  been  a  wonderful  achieve- 
ment— a  swan-song."   In   the  same  volume,   the 
cover  of  which  is  adorned  by  a  curve  from  the 
pencil  of  Aubrey  Beardsley,  himself  then  falling  on 
evil  days — a  curve  which  Ernest  Dowson  spoke 

^  Hor.  Car7n.  Lib.  IV.  i.  3-4.  Although  in  "schooldays 
I  learnt  the  "Odes  of  Horace"  by  heart  three  times,  I  am 
indebted  to  that  good  scholar,  my  old  friend,  Mr  Osman 
Edwards,  for  the  identification  of  Cinara.  Mr  Edwards 
met  Ernest  Dowson  at  Oxford,  but  only  remembers  him 
as  "a  very  quiet  man." 
119 


120  ERNEST  DOWSON 

of  with  great  pride — appear  all  the  old  familiar 
favourite  poems — "Supreme  Unction,"  ''Amor 
Umbratilis,"  ''  To  One  in  Bedlam." 

His  second  book  of  verse  was  published  by 
Leonard  Smithers  &  Co.,  in^  1899,  and  to  me  it 
marks  an  extreme  falling-away  in  the  poet's 
powers.  It  is  full  of  lassitude  and  sorrowfulness, 
as  of  a  man  who  has  done  with  the  world  and  is 
dying  disillusionised.  There  are  three  prose 
poems  at  the  end  of  all,  a  reminiscence  of  the 
admired  prose  poems  of  Baudelaire.  The  second 
of  them,  "  The  Visit,"  cannot  be  read  without  a 
certain  shudder,  for  we  feel,  as  we  read  it,  that  the 
so  sensitive  poet  is  approaching  death. 

*'  Then  dared  I  open  my  eyes  and  I  saw  my 
old  body  on  the  bed,  and  the  room  in  which  I  had 
grown  so  tired,  and  in  the  middle  of  the  room  the 
pan  of  charcoal  which  still  smouldered.  And 
dimly  I  remembered  my  great  weariness  and  the 
lost  whiteness  of  Lalage  and  last  year's  snows  ; 
and  these  things  had  been  agonies." 

I  imagine  that  I  saw  Ernest  Dowson  only  twice 
again.  Once  he  passed  me  on  the  London  pave- 
ment. He  was,  it  seems,  coming  out  of  the  stair- 
case to  Smithers 's  fiat  in  Arundel  Street.  So  ill 
and  absent-minded,  so  pale  and,  to  me,  forbidding 
did  he  look,  that  I  could  not  summon  up  courage 
to  address  him.  Ciii  bono  ?  Of  course  I  am  quite 
wrong,  but  we  all  know  this  state  of  feeling.  It 
is  useless  to  accuse  me  of  being  of  the  irritable 
genus.     I  am  not  unduly  morbid,  and  who  does  not 


THE  LAST  PHASE  121 

know  what  it  is  to  slacken  pace  behind  someone 
who  has  failed  in  cordiality  towards  one  and  has 
seemed  bored  by  one's  advances  and  reminders  ? 
I  had  no  idea  that  Ernest  Dowson  was  then  in 
London  or  how  long  he  would  stay.  He  had 
received  a  facial  injury,  easily  remediable,  which 
may  have  partly  accounted  for  his  unwillingness 
to  revisit  old  and  faithful  friends.  He  was  musing 
as  usual,  and  seemed  to  see  nothing,  his  eyes 
almost  bulging  from  his  head.  He  was  wrapped 
in  a  heavy  coat  and  had  a  larger  cigar  than  of  old 
in  his  mouth.  I  forgot  the  incident,  which  pained 
me  at  the  time,  as  such  things  do. 

However,  in  July,  1897,  he  called  on  us,  dined 
and  stayed  the  night.  Hardly  a  word  could  be 
drawn  from  him.  He  seemed  frozen  to  stone. 
It  was  dreadful.  As  a  family  we  were  longing  for 
sympathy,  for  congratulations.  We  had  a  charm- 
ing new  house  ;  our  little  child  was  at  the  pretty  age 
of  five ;    I  had  been  appointed  to  my  life's  work. 

He  nodded  wearily  in  reply  to  every  question. 
He  would  tell  me  nothing  of  himself.  I  have  no  sort 
of  recollection  of  how  we  got  through  that  evening. 
Did  he  go  out — did  he  stay  at  home  ?     I  forget. 

Next  morning  I  left  him  in  my  book-room.  I 
was  going  for  the  first  time,  if  I  remember 
rightly,  to  visit  my  official  Library  as  Librarian 
elect.  It  was  an  exciting  occasion.  Would  he 
come  too  ?  Oh  no  !  He  waved  the  subject 
aside  as  though  he  were  an  Indian  General 
repressing  the  family  poet.     I  left  him  among  my 


122  ERNEST  DOWSON 

old  books,  of  which  he  used  to  be  so  fond.  At 
about  four  o'clock  I  returned.  He  had  smoked 
innumerable  cigarettes  :  they  lay  all  around  him 
in  saucers  and  trays.  And  with  dreaming  eyes 
he  was  viewing  my  little  child,  who  stood  in  front 
of  him  and  seemed  puzzled  by  his  demeanour. 
He  appeared  to  be  looking  through  her,  while  she 
gazed  at  him.  It  was  the  child  whose  birth  he  had 
hymned. 

Very  shortly  afterwards,  he  arose  briskly 
enough,  borrowed  a  new  suit  of  clothes,  of  which 
I  rarely  possess  an  exemplar,  and  announced  curtly 
that  he  was  going  yachting  off  the  coast  of  Ireland. 
I  congratulated  him  on  his  fashionable  occupation. 
He  never  smiled,  seemed  to  be  painfully  repressing 
something — he  had  seemed  ill  at  ease  and  in  a  state 
of  self -repression  throughout  his  visit — shook  hands 
briefly,  in  a  most  matter-of-fact  way,  left  no  exact 
indication  of  his  future  whereabouts,  was  gone  ! 

•  ••••••• 

A  friend  tells  me  that  he  was  subject  to  these 
moods.  I  at  least  had  not  observed  them  so  far. 
We  never  saw  him  again — never  again  heard 
directly  from  him.  Once,  it  might  have  been  in 
1898,  Lionel  Johnson,  himself  then  entering  his 
mythic  phase,  for  he  shortly  afterwards  shut 
himself  up  in  seclusion  in  his  chambers  and  grew 
a  long  black  beard,  which  I  alone  among  men  ^ 

^  His  charwoman,  since  discovered,  denies  that  the 
beard  was  long,  and  refers  pathetically  to  his  perfect 
manners. 


THE  LAST  PHASE  123 

seem  to  have  beheld — ^Lionel  Johnson  mentioned 
to  me  that  he  had  been  meeting  Ernest  Dowson 
in  London  and  that  the  wandering  poet  had  said  : 
"  I  have  it  on  my  conscience  that  I  have  not  seen 
the  Plarrs/'  This  was  a  little  balm  to  a  sore 
heart.  Did  he  still  suffer  from  his  somewhat 
comic  disfigurement  ?  I  had  not  noticed  it  in 
July,  1897.  Had  he  been  annoyed  by  our  slight 
gleam  of  prosperity  ?  Surely  not.  For,  though 
he  disliked  Kensingtonians,  it  was  the  spiritual 
rather  than  the  local  type  that  was  not  dear  to 
him.  Was  he  ill  ?  He  had  not  appeared  so  at 
the  time  of  his  visit,  and  had  vouchsafed  no  reply 
to  questions  concerning  his  health.  He  had  been 
impenetrable — a  stone. 

Myths  began  to  cluster  round  him.  But  of  this 
we  are  sure :  Adelaide,  the  **  Missie  ''  of  one  of  his 
dedications,  was  married  late  in  September,  1897. 
We  need  only  record  the  fact  with  Tacitean  brevity. 
Mr  Moore  went  to  the  wedding  at  his  earnest 
request,  carrying  the  poet's  present. 

Sunt  lacrimae  rerum ! 

Later  on,  Mr  Guy  Thorne,  who  knew  him  very 
well  in  his  last  period,  heard  him  say  in  answer 
to  the  careless  query :  "  Ernest,  were  you  ever  in 
love  ?  ''  *'  Vous  me  demandez  si  fai  aime  ;  oui ! 
c'est  une  histoire  singuliere  et  terrihle !  "  The  words 
were  Voltaire's. 

"  While  I  live,  "continues  the  writer  in  an  account 
of  "The  Strand  of  Twenty  Years  Ago,"  published  in 
T.P.'s  Weekly  in  July,  1913,  "  I  shall  never  forget 


124  ERNEST  DOWSON 

his  wan  smile,  the  haunted  look  in  the  poor  fellow's 
eyes."  ^ 

He  spent  much  time  in  Paris  ;  he  was  certainly 
there  in  1899  when  ''  Adrian  Rome  "  was  pub- 
lished by  Messrs  Methuen  &  Co.  I  am  informed 
that  a  kind  of  rescue  party  was  sent  out  to  bring 
him  news  of  funds  lying  at  his  disposal  in  the 
hands  of  his  father's  executors.  He  fancied 
himself  at  feud  with  them — ^his  relations.  His 
would-be  rescuer  found  him  lying  in  bed  all  day, 
and  dining,  as  he  was  perversely  fond  of  doing,  at 
a  wretched  little  gargotfe.  He  was  induced  by  his 
old  friend  to  dine  more  handsomely.  His  chief 
admiration  and  associate  seems,  according  to  this 
informant,  to  have  been  the  eccentric  "  Bibi  la 
Puree,"  a  kind  of  tramp  of  literature,  who  had 
a  mania  for  stealing  the  umbrellas  of  celebrities. 
If  this  be  more  than  myth,  it  is  characteristic  of 
my  old  fellow-commentator.  He  had,  poor  fellow, 
apparently  sunk  into  an  extreme  condition  of  self- 
neglect.  He  carried  his  miser e  to  Dieppe  in  the 
summer  of  1899. 

It  is  strange  to  think  of  him  as  perhaps  once 
more  at  the  romantic  Chateau  d'Arques,  among 
whose  ruins  and  in  whose  ancient  forest  he  may 
have  wandered  when  he  stayed  at  Arques  in  1895. 
It  was  his  last  summer  now.  At  Arques  they  show 
you  the  skeleton  of  a  lady  who  had  been  immured 

^  If  Mr  Guy  Thorne  refers  to  the  period  of  1893  in  this 
and  a  later  passage,  it  is  curious  to  reflect  that  Dowson  had 
already  passed  into  his  last  phase  in  some  circles. 


THE  LAST  PHASE  125 

in  the  thick  wall  in  some  dark  forgotten  age. 
At  the  bony  feet  lies  the  skeleton  of  a  little  dog. 
Which  of  them  had  died  first  ?  What  had  been 
their  offence  ?  Did  the  poet,  penned  in  by  stony 
destiny  and  drawing  near  his  end,  see  them,  too, 
and  what  were  his  thoughts  ? 

These  weird  relics  were  shown  me  two  years  ago, 
when  out  in  the  country  for  the  first  time  after  a 
summer  of  illness  and  a  drastic  operation.  I  was 
rejoicing  in  the  autumn  sunlight,  and  had  I  known 
that  this  was  where  my  friend  perhaps  last 
wandered,  how  furiously  I  should  have  been  given 
to  think  ! 

A  story  of  his  going  a  long  expedition  in  the 
Netherlands  and  elsewhere  with  Mr  Norreys 
Connell,  another  of  his  inhabiting  a  London  flat 
in  the  absence  of  a  friend  and  decorating  it  with 
herring-bones,  and  another  of  his  enjoying  a 
short  period  of  sartorial  rehabilitation  which  lasted 
about  a  fortnight — these  may  belong  to  this  or  an 
earlier  period. 

After  Dieppe  he  probably  came  to  London. 
He  stayed  for  long  in  the  Euston  Road  and 
there  Mr  Robert  Harborough  Sherard  found  him. 

To  the  last  London  period,  perhaps,  belongs 
Mr  Guy  Thome's  description  of  him  as  flitting 
about,  seemingly  a  lost  creature,  "  a  youthful 
ghost  strayed  amongst  the  haunts  of  men.  .  .  . 
Pale,  emaciated,  in  clothes  that  were  almost 
ragged,  poor  Ernest  flittered  [about]  in  search  of 
someone  with  whom  to  talk.     When  he  found  a 


126  ERNEST  DOWSON 

friend,  his  face  would  light  up  with  a  singular 
and  penetrating  sweetness  that  made  one  forget 
an  untidiness — to  use  no  other  word — that  verged 
upon  offence." 

Side  by  side  with  this  passage  I  should  like  here 
to  quote  Mr  Edgar  Jepson's  appreciation  : 

^  "  Ernest  Dowson  was  a  dreamer  with  the  finest 
and  most  delicate  sense  of  beauty.  He  was  an 
exile  in  this  world  ;  and  very  wisely  he  lived 
aloof,  as  far  as  it  would  let  him,  in  the  beautiful 
world  of  his  dreams,  which  he  has  now  without 
doubt  inherited.  Of  externals  he  was  utterly 
heedless.  He  did  not  love  the  sordid  at  all ;  but 
he  did  pay  as  much  attention  to  his  appearance 
as  that  stern  Englishman,  Dr  Johnson.  He  was 
simply  not  concerned  with  the  world  ;  and  I  think 
that  his  wonderful,  gentle  charm  came  from  this 
attitude  to  life.  He  never  cared  enough  for  this 
world  to  pose  before  it ;  he  had  the  charm  of  perfect 
simplicity  and  sincerity,  the  charm  of  an  extra- 
ordinary gentleness.  He  was  always  just  Ernest 
Dowson  ;  and  it  was  a  delightful  person  to  be." 

The  friend  who  had  gone  to  rescue  the  poet  in 
Paris  met  him  for  the  last  time  in  London.  He 
was  ill  and  coughing,  and  was  invited  to  dine  at 
a  good  restaurant,  which  was  named. 

"  I  cannot  face  a  dinner  at  's,"  said  the 

poet  despairingly. 

Our  impressions  of  others  are  coloured  by  our 


THE  LAST  PHASE  127 

own  personalities,  and  I  thank  Mr  Arthur  Moore 
for  thus  always  remembering  our  friend  in  other 
than  lurid  lights.  He  told  me  (13th  January  1914) 
that  the  last  time  he  saw  Ernest  Dowson  was 
about  two  months  before  his  death.  Like  myself 
he  had  received  very  few  letters  from  him  after 
1895.  Ernest  was  then  lodging  in  the  Euston 
Road.  Though  coughing  a  good  deal,  he  did  not 
seem  exceptionally  ill,  for  ''dilapidated  "  he  had 
always  seemed,  as  his  friends  well  knew.  Yet  it 
was  the  last  phase,  of  which  we  were  mostly 
entirely  unaware. 

Years  for  us  had  passed  after  that  summer  day 
in  1897.  We,  indeed,  heard  scarcely  a  rumour  of 
the  friend,  who  had  been  so  much  to  us  and  who 
could  never  be  out  of  mind.  London  and  life  are 
full  of  these  spiritual  miseries.  In  the  case  of 
relations,  of  shallow  persons  who  have  suddenly 
risen  in  the  world,  and  of  those  far- wandering 
Englishmen,  who  write  the  poetry  of  ''  Home  " 
when  thousands  of  miles  away  and  forget  to  call 
on  their  oldest  friends  when  they  are  here,  we 
take  this  kind  of  thing  for  granted.  But  Ernest 
Dowson  was  different ! 

•  ••••••• 

One  grey  morning  in  February,  1900,  I  was 
writhing  in  bed  in  the  pangs  of  herpes  zoster, 
vulgarly  known  as  shingles.  Courteous  reader, 
avoid  making  a  rash  acquaintance  with  that  belt 
of  fire  !  My  wife  came  into  the  room,  and  in  a 
very  startled  and  shocked  voice  announced  our 


128  ERNEST  DOWSON 

friend's  death.  It  was  in  the  morning  paper  under 
a  sensational  heading.  Mr  Sherard  had  written 
his  remarkable  and  much-quoted  account  of  the 
poet's  last  hours.  We  found  ourselves  included 
in  the  general  condemnation  of  the  friends  who 
had  let  him  die.  Ye  gods  !  our  doors  had  stood 
open  for  him,  our  lamp  had  been  trimmed  for  him 
for  years  !  He  had  stayed  many  days  with  us  in  the 
dear  old  seasons  :  why  had  he  not  died  with  us  ? 

They  buried  him  according  to  the  rites  of  his 
Church,  that  knew  not  whom  she  was  burying. 
I  was  too  ill  to  attend  the  funeral,  and  my  wife 
in  tears  went  for  me,  accompanied  by  another  old 
defender,  Mr  Edgar  Jepson.  I  could  do  no  more 
than  send  him  a  laurel  wreath,  my  custom  when 
poets  die. 

In  the  summer  the  shock  had  been  so  far 
recovered  from  that  one  was  able  to  think  of  him 
again  as  though  the  mysteries  and  the  silences 
had  not  been.  In  Cornwall,  by  the  violet  sea,  the 
long  elegy  was  written  which,  after  the  lapse  of 
many  years,  has  been  in  part  published  in  Poetry 
and  Drama  for  June,  1913.^  And  now  its  kind 
readers  ask  me  :     **  Who  was  the  young  Poet  ?  " 

O  my  friend,  if  only  ours  had  been  another  kind 
of  good-bye  ! 

^  "  An  Informal  Epitaph  on  a  Young  Poet,"  Poetry  and 
Drama y  June,  191 3. 

February  21,  1914. 


"I  have  got  my  leave.  Bid  me  farewell, 
my  brothers  !  I  bow  to  you  all  and  take 
my  departure.  Here  I  give  back  the  keys 
of  my  door — and  I  give  up  all  claims  to 
my  house.  I  only  ask  for  last  kind  words 
from  you.  We  were  neighbours  for  long, 
but  I  received  more  than  I  could  give. 
Now  the  day  has  dawned  and  the  lamp 
that  lit  my  dark  corner  is  out.  A  summons 
has  come  and  I  am  ready  for  my  journey." 

From  "  Gitanjali,"  by  Rabindranath  Tagore 
(Macmillan  &  Co.  Ltd.,  1913). 


We    are    indebted    to    Mr    Guy    Harrison    for    the 
bibliography  of  Ernest  Dowson's  works. 


A    BIBLIOGRAPHY^   OF    THE 
WORKS  OF  ERNEST  DOWSON 

POETRY 

1889 

Temple  Bar.  (With  which  is  incorporated 
Benthys  Miscellany y)  A  Magazine  for  Town 
and  Country  Readers.  8vo.  Vol.  Ixxxv. 
Richard  Bentley  &  Son.     London,  1889. 

[Part  341  of  the  above,  for  April,  1889,  contains  at  p.  514 
a  poem  intituled  "  My  Lady  April,"  and  signed  "  Ernest 
Dowson."] 

1891 

The  Century  Guild  Hobby  Horse.  Illus- 
trated. (Edited — vols.  i.  and  ii.  by  A.  H. 
Mackmurdo  and  H.  P.  HoRNE ;  vols,  iii.-vi. 
by  H.  P.  Horne,  and  vol.  vii.  by  A.  H. 
Mackmurdo.)  7  vols.  4to.  London, 
1 886- 1 892. 

[Vol.  vi.  (1891)  of  the  above  contains  the  following  poems, 
signed  "  Ernest  Dowson  "  : — 

"Non   sum   qualis   eram   bonae   sub   regno   Cynarae" 
(p.  67). 

^  Only  the  date  oifirst  publication  is  given. 


132  ERNEST  DOWSON 

"  In  praise  of  solitude  :  Fleur  de  la  lune"  (p.  136). 
"The   Carmelite    Nuns   of  the   Perpetual  Adoration" 

(pp.  136-137). 
"Amor  Umbratilis"  (pp.  137-138).] 

1892 

The  Book  of  the  Rhymers'  Club.  (Only 
350  copies  issued.)  Roy.  i6mo,  pp.  xvi  +  94. 
Elkin  Mathews.     London,  1892. 

[The    above    includes   the   following   poems    by  Ernest 
Dowson  : — 

"  Carmelite    Nuns  of  the   Perpetual   Adoration "    (pp. 

10,11). 
"  O  Mors  !  quam  amara  est  memoria  tua  homini  pacem 

habenti  in  substantiis  suis"  (pp.  30,  31). 
"Amor  Umbratilis"  (p.  41). 
"Ad  Domnulam  suam"  (p.  53). 
"Vanitas"  (pp.  69,  70). 
"  Villanelle  of  Sunset"  (p.  83).] 

1894 

The  Second  Book  of  the  Rhymers'  Club. 
(Only  500  copies  issued.)  Roy.  i6mo,  pp. 
xvi-fi36.  Elkin  Mathews  and  John  Lane. 
London,    1894. 

[The   above   includes    the  following   poems    by    Ernest 
Dowson  : — 

"Extreme  Unction"  (pp.  6,  7). 

"To  One  in  Bedlam"  (p.  35). 

"  Non  sum   qualis   eram   bonae   sub   regno  Cynarae " 

(pp.  60,  61). 
"Growth"  (p.  83). 
.  "The  Garden  of  Shadow"  (p.  105). 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


^33 


"You   would   have   understood   me,  had   you  waited" 
(pp.  1 20,  121). 


The  Rhymers'  Club  consisted  of  the 

following  : — 

John  Davidson  ^ 

(1857-1909) 

Ernest  Dowson 

.     ( 1 867-1900) 

Edwin  J.  Ellis     . 

(18     -         ) 

George  Arthur  Greene 

(1853-         ) 

Lionel  Johnson 

(1867-1902) 

Arthur  Cecil  Hillier 

(18     -         ) 

Richard  Le  Gallienne 

(1866-         ) 

Victor  Plarr        .         .         .         . 

(1863-         ) 

Ernest  Radford 

(1857-         ) 

Ernest  Rhys 

(1859-         ) 

Thomas  Wm.  Rolleston     . 

(1857-         ) 

Arthur  Symons 

(1865-         ) 

John  Todhunter 

(1839-         ) 

Wm.  Butler  Yeats 

(1865-         ). 

^  John  Davidson,  though  a  member  of  the  club,  did  not 
contribute  to  the  books.  Besides  members,  the  club  had  at  one 
time  affiliated  to  itself  the  following  permanent  guests  : — John 
Gray,  Edward  Rose,  J.  T.  Nettleship,  Morley  Roberts,  A.  B. 
Chamberlain,  Edward  Garnett  and  William  Theodore  Peters. 
These  names  are  from  a  list  in  the  handwriting  of  Dr  G.  A. 
Greene,  who  acted  as  hon.  secretary  to  a  club  without  rules  or 
officers.] 


1896 

Verses.  Printed  on  Japanese  vellum,  and  bound 
in  parchment,  with  cover  design  in  gold 
by  Aubrey  Beardsley.  (Only  30  copies 
so  printed — also  an  ordinary  edition  of  500 
copies.)  Cr.  8vo,  pp.  xii-f  57.  L.  Smithers. 
London,  1896. 


134  ERNEST  DOWSON 

The  Savoy.  An  Illustrated  Quarterly,  devoted 
to  literature  and  art,  edited  by  ARTHUR 
Symons.  4to.  Eight  numbers.  Jan. -Dec. 
1896  (all  published).  Leonard  Smithers. 
London,  1896. 

[The  above  contains  the  following  poems  by  Ernest 
Dowson  : — 

"  Impenitentia  Ultima."     No.  i  (Jan.  1896),  p.  131. 
"  Saint-Germain-en-Laye."     No.  2  (Apr.  1896),  p.  55. 
"  Breton  Afternoon."     No.  3  (July  1896),  p.  40. 
"  Venite  Descendamus."     No.  4  (Aug.  1896),  p.  41. 
A  Song,  "All  that  a  man  may  pray."     No.   5    (Sept. 

1896),  p.  36. 
"  The  Three  Witches."     No.  6  (Oct.  1896),  p.  75- 
"Epilogue."     No.  7  (Nov.  1896),  p.  87.] 

1897 

The  Pageant.  Edited  by  C.  Hazelwood 
Shannon  and  J.  W.  Gleeson  White. 
4to.     Henry  &  Co.     London,  1897. 

[Contains  at  page  232  a  poem  written  by  Dowson  at 
Pont-Aven,  Finistere,  in  1896,  intituled:  "On  a  Breton 
Cemetery."] 

1899 

Decorations.  In  Verse  and  Prose.  (Printed  on 
hand-made  paper,  and  bound  in  parchment, 
with  cover  design  in  gold  by  Aubrey 
Beardsley.  (Limited  issue.)  Sq.  cr.  Svo, 
pp.  50.     L.  Smithers  &  Co.     London,  1899. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  135 

The  Poems  of  Ernest  Dowson.  With  a 
Memoir  by  ARTHUR  Symons.  Four  illustra- 
tions by  Aubrey  Beardsley,  and  a  portrait 
by  William  Rothenstein.  Cr.  8vo,  pp. 
xxxviii+166.     John  Lane.     London,  1905. 

[The  above  collected  edition  contains  "Verses,"  "The 
Pierrot  of  the  Minute"  and  "Decorations."] 

PROSE 

1888 

Temple  Bar.  (With  which  is  incorporated 
Bentley's  Miscellany?)  A  Magazine  for  Town 
and  Country  Readers.  8vo.  Vol.  Ixxxii. 
Richard  Bentley  &  Son.     London,  1888. 

[Part  326  of  the  above,  for  January  1888,  contains,  at  pp. 
83-98,  "  Souvenirs  of  an  Egoist,"  signed  "  Ernest  C  Dowson." 
This  was  reprinted  in  "Dilemmas"  in  1895.] 

1889 

The  Critic. 

London,  1889-18     . 

[The  above  for  21st  September  1889  contains  the  following 
by  Dowson  (unsigned)  : — 

"Between  the  Acts."     {The  Critic  Feuilleton — No.  2.) 
The  Critic  for  )  18     ,  contains  : — 

"  The  Cult  of  the  Child." 

1890 

Macmillan's  Magazine.    8vo.    Vols.  Ixi.  &  Ixiv. 
Macmillan  &  Co.     London,  1890-1891. 


136  ERNEST  DOWSON 

[The  above  for  February  1890  contains  at  pp.  274-281  : 
"The   Diary   of  a    Successful   Man"— signed   "N.B." 
(  =  Dowson).     This    was    reprinted    in  "Dilemmas" 
(1895)- 

1891 

The  part  for  August  1891  contains  at  pp.  305-314  : 

"The  Story  of  a  Violin" — signed  "Ernest  Dowson.^' 
This  was  later  reprinted  in  "  Dilemmas  '■'-  under  the 
title  of  "An  Orchestral  Violin."] 

The  Century  Guild  Hobby  Horse.  (Illus- 
trated. (Edited — vols.  i.  and  ii.  by  A.  H. 
Mackmurdo  and  H.  P.  Horne  ;  vols.  iii.  to 
vi.  by  H.  P.  HoRNE,  and  vol.  vii.  by  A.  H. 
Mackmurdo.)  7  vols.  4to.  London,  1886- 
1892. 

[Vol.  vi.  (1891)  of  the  above  contains  the  following,  signed 
"  Ernest  Dowson  "  : — 

"A  Case  of  Conscience  "  (at  pp.  2-13).] 

1893 

The  Hobby  Horse.  (Illustrated.  A  continu- 
ation of  T/ie  Century  Guild  Hobby  Horse, 
edited  by  H.  P.  HORNE.)  4to.  Three 
numbers  (all  published).  Elkin  Mathews. 
1 893- 1 894. 

[No.  I  (1893)  of  the  above  contains  : — 

"The  Statute  of  Limitations''  (at  pp.  2-8.)  Reprinted 
in  "Dilemmas"  in  1895.] 

Dowson  (Ernest)  and  Arthur  Moore.  "A 
Comedy  of  Masks."  A  Novel.  3  vols.  Crown 
8vo.     Wm.  Heineman.     London,  1893-4. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  137 

1894 

COUPERUS  (Louis  Marie  Anne).  "  Majesty." 
Translated  by  A.  Teixeira  DE  Mattos 
and  Ernest  Dowson.  8vo,  pp.  419. 
T.  Fisher  Unwin.     London,  1894. 

Zola  (Emile  Edouard  Charles  Antoine).  "La 
Terre."  Translated  by  ERNEST  DowsON. 
Printed  by  the  Lutetian  Society,  for  private 
distribution.     Svo.     London,  1894. 

The  Yellow  Book.  An  Illustrated  Quarterly. 
Edited  by  HENRY  Harland  [1861-1905] 
and  Aubrey  Beardsley  [1862- 1898].  4to. 
13  vols.  April-July  1894  Elkin  Mathews 
and  John  Lane;  October  1894  to  April  1897 
John  Lane. 

[Vol.  iii.  (Oct.  1894)  contains  at  pp.  93-109,  a  story  by 
Dowson,  intituled,  "  Apple  Blossom  in  Brittany."] 

1895 

Dilemmas  :  Stories  and  Studies  in  Sentiment. 
A  Case  of  Conscience.  The  Diary  of  a 
Successful  Man.  An  Orchestral  Violin. 
The  Statute  of  Limitations.  Souvenirs  of  an 
Egoist.  Crown  Svo,  pp.  139.  Elkin  Mathews. 
London,  1895. 

1895-1896 

MUTHER  (Richard).  "The  History  of  Modern 
Painting."  Translated  by  Ernest  Dowson, 
G.  A.  Greene  and  A.  C.  Hillier.     With  over 


138  ERNEST  DOWSON 

1300  portraits  and  illustrations.  Sq.  imp. 
8vo,  3  vols.,  pp.  2304.  Henry  &  Co.  London. 
I.  and  II.  1895;  ni.  1896. 

1896 

The  Savoy.  An  Illustrated  Quarterly,  devoted 
to  literature  and  art,  edited  by  ARTHUR 
Symons.  4to.  Eight  numbers.  Smithers. 
London,  1896. 

[The  above  contains  the  following  prose  by  Dowson  : — 
"  The  Eyes  of  Pride."    A  Story.     No.  i  (Jan.  1896),  pp. 

51-63. 
"  Countess    Marie  of  the   Angels."     A   Story.      No.   2 

(April  1896),  pp.  173-183. 
"  The    Dying    of  Francis    Donne."    A   Study.     No.  4 

(Aug.  1896),  pp.  66-74.] 

Balzac  (Honore  de).  "  La  Fille  aux  Yeux  d'Or  " 
(The  Girl  with  the  Golden  Eyes).  Translated 
by  Ernest  Dowson.  With  6  Illustrations 
engraved  on  wood  by  CHARLES  CONDER. 
Demy  8vo,  pp.  vii.  +  107.  Leonard  Smithers. 
London,  1896. 

[Charles   Conder   (1868- 1909)  was   a  friend    of  Dowson. 
There  is  an  account  of  him  in  The  Diet,   of  Nat.  Biog.'\ 

1898 

Choderlos  de  Laclos  (Pierre  Ambroise 
Francois).  "  Les  Liaisons  Dangereuses  :  or 
Letters  collected  in  a  Private  Society,  and 
published     for    the    Instruction    of  Others." 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  139 

Translated  by  ERNEST  DOWSON.  With 
15  Illustrations  after  Monet,  Fragonard  fils, 
and  Gerard.  Privately  printed  and  limited 
to  350  copies.     Demy  8vo.     1898. 


1899 

DowsON  (Ernest)  and  ARTHUR  MoORE.  "  Adrian 
Rome."  A  Tale.  8vo,  pp.  364.  Methuen  & 
Co.     London,  1899. 

Dubois  (Guillaume,  Cardinal  Archbishop  of 
Cambrai).  "  Memoirs  of  Cardinal  Dubois " 
[by  Paul  Lacroix].  Translated  from  the 
French  by  Ernest  Dowson.  Demy  8vo. 
2  vols.,  each  with  frontispiece.  L.  Smithers 
&  Co.     London,  1899. 

Voltaire  (Francois  Marie  Arouet  de).  "  La 
Pucelle  d'Orleans"  (  The  Maid  of  Orleans). 
An  herico-comical  poem,  in  twenty-one 
cantos.  A  new  and  complete  translation, 
corrected  and  augmented  from  the  earlier 
translation  of  W.  H.  Ireland,  and  the  one 
attributed  to  Lady  Charleville,  with  the 
variants,  now  for  the  first  time  translated,  by 
Ernest  Dowson,  for  the  Lutetian  Society. 
Edition  limited  to  500  copies.  8vo.  2  vols. 
London,  1899. 


140  ERNEST  DOWSON 

DRAMA 

1897 

The  Pierrot  of  the  Minute.  A  Dramatic 
Phantasy,  in  One  Act  [in  verse].  With  frontis- 
piece, initial  letter,  vignette,  cul-de-lampe 
and  cover  design  by  AUBREY  Beardsley. 
Edition  de  luxe  of  300  copies.  4to,  pp.  43. 
L.  Smithers.     London,  1897. 


POSTHUMOUS   WORKS 

1907 

GONCOURT  (Edmond  Louis  Antoine  de)  and 
Goncourt  (Jules  Alfred  de).  "The  Con- 
fidantes of  a  King :  the  Mistress  of  Louis 
XV."  Translated  by  Ernest  Dowson. 
With  portraits.  8vo.  2  vols.  T.  N.  Foulis. 
London  and  Edinburgh,  1907. 

1908 

"  The  Story  of  Beauty  and  the  Beast."      The 

complete  fairy  story,  translated  from  the 
French  by  ERNEST  DowsON.  With  4  plates 
(in  colour)  by  CHARLES  CONDER.  Cr.  4to, 
pp.  118.     John  Lane.     London,  1908. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  141 

REFERENCES 

References  to  the  life,  work  and  friends  of 
Dovvson  are  to  be  found  in  the  following : — 

The  Academy  (London)  for  November  1907 
contains  an  appreciation  of  Ernest  Dowson's 
personality  under  the  heading :  "  The  Real 
Ernest  Dowson,"  by  his  friend,  Edgar 
Jepson. 

The  Author  [founded  and  for  many  years 
edited  by  Sir  WALTER  Besant]  for  May 
1900  contains  at  pp.  265-268  an  account  of 
Dowson's  last  hours  by  his  friend,  ROBERT 
H.  Sherard.     London. 

Gibson  (Frank).  "Charles  Conder :  His  Life  and 
Work."  With  a  catalogue  of  the  lithographs 
and  etchings  by  Campbell  Dodgson.  With 
121  Illustrations.  4to,  pp.  117.  John  Lane. 
London,  1914. 

[The  above  contains  references  to  Dowson's  "The 
Story  of  Beauty  and  the  Beast,"  at  pp.  40,  68,  109  ; 
and  to  his  translation  of  "  La  Fille  aux  Yeux  d'Or," 
at  pp.  78  and  109.] 

i^'jACKSON  (Holbrook).  "The  Eighteen  Nineties." 
A  Review  of  Art  and  Ideas  at  the  Close  of 
the  Nineteenth  Century.  With  24  Illustra- 
tions. 8vo,  pp.  368.  Grant  Richards. 
London,  1914. 

[References  to  Dowson  at  pp.  39,  55,  69,  84,  no,  191,  194, 
and  201.] 


142  ERNEST  DOWSON 

Kennedy  (J.  M).  "English  Literature:  1880- 
1905."  8vo,  pp.  340.  Stephen  Swift.  London, 
1912. 

[References  to  Dowson  at  pp.  136,  137,  138,  139  and  140.] 

Murdoch  (W.  G.  Blaikie).  "  The  Renaissance  of 
the  Nineties."  Sq.  i6mo,  pp.  xiii  +  83.  Alex. 
Moring.     London,  191 1. 

[Contains  some  references  to  Dowson,  and  gives  a  critical 
account  of  the  literature  and  art  of  his  time.] 

Sherard  (Robert  Harborough).  "  Twenty  Years 
in  Paris."  Being  some  Recollections  of  a 
Literary  Life.  With  8  Illustrations.  8vo,  pp. 
XV. +  499.     Hutchinson.     London,  1905. 

[Gives    some   personal  reminiscences  of  Dowson  at  pp. 
397-412  and  p.  437.] 


INDEX 


Absinthe,  i6 

Adelaide,  117,  123 

"  Adrian  Rome,"   123 

Affectations,  27,  31,  93 

"  African    Farm,     An,"     42, 

etc. 
Alexandrines,  26 
Alsace,  91,  107,  108,  109 
America  and  Americans,  21, 

97,  108 
American  literature,  25 
"  Amor  Umbratilis,"   18,   19, 

119 
Ancestors,    18 
Anthology,  Greek,  60 
Arques,  105,  124 
Artist,  whom  or  what  he  may 

serve,  55 
Astrology,  98,  99 


Balzac,  24,  99 

Bantock,    Mr    Granville,   49, 

64,    65 
Barlas,  John  Evelyn,  60 
Barretts,  the,  18 
Bathe  in  sea,  100,  loi 
Baudelaire,  24,  120 
Beardsley,    Aubrey,    30,    66, 

79.  119 
"  Bibi  la  Puree,"  124 
Bilinguals,  24 
"  Bingers,"  15,  16 
Bivouacking,    14 
Blackboard,   25,   26 
Book  of  the  Rhymers'  Club, 

54,  56,  60 

143 


Book  of  the  Rhymers'  Club 
(Second),  80,  86,  98,  119 

Books,  possession  of,  74 

Boiilangisme,   22 

Bourgeoisie,  etc.,  25,  32,  34 

Breton  itinerary,    107 

Breton  pardon,   107 

Breton  peasants  and  Alsa- 
tians, 108,  109 

Brittany,  67,  105,  106,  etc. 

Browning  reading,  83 

Browning,  Robert,  18,  83 


Catford,   104 

Century  Guild   Hobby  Horse, 

19,  67,  68 
Chamfort,  24 
Change  of  heart  of  poet,  49, 

50.  51 
Chatterton,  9,  82,  104 
Childhood,  12,  20,  79 
Chouans,  67,  112,  113 
Church  and  stage,  69 
Colds,  severe,  61,  94,  10 1 
Comedy    of    Masks,    87,    91, 

92,  93>  94 
"  Comedy  Overture,"  49,  67 
Conder,  Charles,  105 
Council,    Mr    Norreys,     104, 

105,  125 
Conversation,    probable,    12, 

13 
Conversion  of  poet,  30,  49 

Cookery  of  poet,  84 

Costume,  107,  108 

Couples,  old  school,  73 


144 


INDEX 


Crane,  Mr  Walter,  63,  68,  73 
Criticism  by  others,  55,  56 
"  Cult  of  the  Child,"  79 
"  Cynara,"  19,  57,  119 


Davidson,  John,  63 

Death,   allusions  to,   98,   99, 

no  ;    announced,   127 
Decadence,   30,  43,  59,   74 
"  Decorations,"  24,  119 
"  Deluge,  Apres  nous  le,"  59 
Destree,  Olivier  Georges,  68 
Dickens,  Charles,  94 
Dieppe,  visits  to,  28,  29,  105, 

124,  125 
"  Dilemmas,"   93 
Dockers'  Bill,  32 
Dockhouse,   32,   36,  etc.,   94, 

102,  103 
Dol,  III 

"  Douzeuc,"  Monsieur,  112 
Dowson    Club,     82  ;     intime, 

9,   125,   126  ;    Mrs,   18,  55, 

86,  102  ;  myth,  79,  81,  123; 

Rowland,  103  ;    Senior,  18, 

33.  34.  39,  40,  86,  102 


Flaubert,  Gustave,  25,  107 
Forest  Row,  20,  40,  41 
French  culture,  24,  25,  26 
French,  how  spoken,  23,  24  ; 

mania,  22,  23,  25 
French  literature,  24 
French  Revolution,  24,  84 
Funeral,  127,  128 


Gallicisms,  25 

Galton,  Rev.  Arthur,  68 

Gambling,  20 

Gautier,  Th.,  65 

Gems,  Polish  tradition  of,  97 

German    commentators,    42, 

etc. 
German,    knowledge    of,    71, 

74.  75,  77 
Gide,  M.  Andre,  23 
"  Girl  with  the  Golden  Eyes," 

99 
Gray,   Father   John,   60,   68, 

72,  74  ;   Thomas,  31,  86,  87 
Greek  plays,  72,  73 
Greene,  Dr  G.  A.,  21,  56,  60, 

67,  86,  87 


East  End  adventures,  94 
Education,  20,  21 
Edwards,  Mr  Osman,  119 
"  Eighteen  Nineties,"  29,  72 
Emotion,  49,  54 
English    literature,    etc.,    25, 

74 
Englishmen  sighted,  113,  114 
Entente  Cordiale,  24 
"  Epistolary  Paralysis,"  86 
Euston  Road,  125,  126 


Financial  worries,  29,    102, 

103 
Fitzroy  Street  house — visitors 

and  genius,  67,  68 
Flattery,  29 


Handwriting,  32 
Haslemere  visit,  83,  etc. 
Headlam,  Rev.   Stewart,  68, 

69,  70 
Health  and  frames  of  mind, 

loi,  104,  117,  121,  etc.,  125, 

126 
Heine  translation,  74,  75 
HiUier,  Mr  Arthur  Cecil,  54, 

85,  86,  96,  106 
History,  21 

Hobby  Horse,  19,  67,  68 
Home  of  Dowsons,  visits  to, 

40,  41 
Hoole,  Mr  Gerald,  103 
Horace  quoted,  88 
Home,   Mr    Herbert,    19,   63, 

67,  68,  81,  88,  91,  95 


INDEX 


145 


Hot  weather,  poet  on,  84,  85, 

86,  87 
Humour,  20,  65 


Ignorance  and  information, 

21.  25,  35,  36,  74 
Image,  Professor,  61,  64,  67, 

68 
"  In  Autumn,"  62 
Independent  Theatre,  66 
"  In  Tempore  Senectatis,"  69 
"  Informal     Epitaph     on     a 

Young  Poet,"  128 
Intoxication,  legend  of,  14 


"  J.,"  Mr,  II 

Jackson,  Mr  Holbrook,  29,  72 

Jepson,  Mr  Edgar,  14,  16,  79, 

93.  95.  98,  loi,  106,  125,  128 
Johnson,   Lionel,  22,  26,  27, 

30.  55.  56,   59.  63,  64,  66, 

67,  68,  74,  80,  81,  91,  loi, 

106,  117,  122 
Johnson,  Dr,  126 
Journalistic  appointments,  78 
Jubilee  of  1887,  84,  85 


Keats,   John,  18,  35,  58,  103 
Kensingtonians,  67,   123 
Kipling's       "  Many      Inven- 
tions," 87 


Labour  Movement,  33 
Lady,  wonderful  old,  74 
Lamartine,   17 
"  La  Terre,"  96,  97,  99 
Latin  genius  of  poet,  18,  59 
Latin  poets,  109 
Laughter,    66 
Leas  at  Folkestone,  100 
Le  Faouet,  no,  in,  112,  116 
Le  Gallienne,  Mr  Richard,  63, 
91 

K 


Letters,  charm  of  his,  9,   31, 

50,  51,  52,  85,  106,  126 
Letter-writing,     31,    53,    54, 

69.  87 
Librarianship,  75,  76,  77,  79, 

80,  89 
Life,  interest  in,   93,  95,  98, 

100 
Life  of  poet  in  three  periods, 

16,  20 
Literary  culture,  24,  25 
"  London  on  a  Gala  Day,"  84 
London,  Port  of,  33 
Loti,  M.  Pierre,  13,  24 
Love   affair,   49,    50,    51,    54, 

55.  103 
Lutetian  Society,  97 

Mansueta,  88-90,  92-94 

"  Many  Inventions,"  87 

Meeting  with  poet,  11 

Milton's  glass  of  water,  14 

Mind,  frames  of,  and  health, 
loi,  104,  117,  121,  etc., 
125,  126 

Mind  of  poet,  25,  26,  27,  28, 
29,  42,  etc.,  49,  53.  54.  55. 
60,  61,  70,  98 

"  Miserables,  Les,"  old  gentle- 
man in,  34 

Misogyny.     See  Opinions. 

"  Missie,"  80,  123 

Mob,  the,  62,  65,  87 

"  Montmartre,"  "  Anatole 
de,"  42,  etc. 

Moore,  Mr  Arthur,  88,  93,  98, 
102,  103,  104,  105,  106,  III, 
113,  116,  117,  123,  126 

Morris,  William,  62,  74 

Mot  Juste,  25,  26 

Music,  65,  71 

Names,  old  family,  90 
Ne\Mnarch,  Mrs  Rosa,  49.  64 
Novels  in   collaboration,  87, 
88,  92,  93 


146 


INDEX 


"  Odd  Volumes,"  95 

Omdurman,  90 

"  On  the  Birth  of  a  Friend's 

Child,"  89 
Opinions     on     Annihilation, 

Belief,  Devil,  Immortality, 

Religion,  Woman,  etc.,  etc., 

etc.,  43,  etc. 
Originality,    27 
Oxford  of  the  eighties,  48 
Oxford  period,   17,  20 

Paris,    opinion   of,    22,    85  ; 

visits  to,  104,  105,  117,  123 

Peasantry,  spirit  of,  108,  109, 

113 
Periods,  three,   16,  20 
Peters,  Theodore,  66,  92 
Phthisis,  10 1,  103 
"  Pierrot  of  the  Minute,"  49, 

64,  66,  67 
Plarr,  Marion,  Poem  on  birth 

of,  etc.,  88,  117,  122 
Plato,  13,  48 
Poems  in  MS.,  19,  98,  99 
Poet  described,  35,  125,  126  ; 

last  glimpses  of,   125,  126, 

127 
Poetry,  16,  17,  18,  65,  76,  117; 

debate  on,  63  ;    of  Ernest 

Dowson,     49,     50  ;      static 

and  "  Tapestry,"  109 
Poets  and  business,  75,  76,  77 
Politics,  22 
Pont-Aven,    105,     114,     115, 

116,  117 
Pope,  Alexander,  32,  88 
Portraits,  20,  21 
Propertius,  48,  57,  58 
Prose  poems,  24,  120 
Public  School  training,  17,  18 

Queen's    College,    Oxford, 

13,  102,  119 
"  Quid  non  speremus,  aman- 

tes  ?  ",   98 


Recitation  at  Rh^nners',  66 

Renan  quoted,  47 

Reptile,  supposed  noxious,  84 

Rescue  party,  123,  124 

Reticence,  30,  50 

Reviews,  poet  on,  71,  92,  94 

Rhymers'  Club  Meetings,  60, 

61,  62,  63,  66,  67,  81,  94,  95 
Rhys,  Ernest,  68,  119 
Rickett's,  Charles,  91 
Rime  Riche,  26 
Riotous  behaviour,  14,  15,  16 
Rivarol's  burglar,  95 
Roberts,  Morley,  on  rh^'^mers, 

64 
Rome,  converts  to  Church  of, 

30 
Rothenstein,  Mr  William,  21, 

68 

Sainte  Barbe,  III,  112,  116 
Salons,  73,  74 
Sandgate  visit,  100 
"  Sapientia  Lunae,"  61 
Sargent,  Mr,  21 
Sartorial   rehabilitation,    125 
Sayle,  Mr  Charles,  11,  76,  102 
Scaer,    107,    112 
Scapularies,  100 
Schopenhauer,  47,  48 
Schreiner,  Miss  Olive,  42,  etc. 
Science,   modern,   21,   63,   74 
Second    Book    of    Rhymers' 

Club.  SeeBook of  Rhymers' 

Club. 
Sedan,  90,  91 
Self -neglect,    124,    125 
Senta,  21 
Severn,  18,  103 
Sherard,     Mr     Robert    Har- 

borough,  9,     72,    94,    104, 

125,  127 
Ship,  visit  to  a,  34,  35 
Ship,  playing  at,  36 
Shipowners  and  dockers,  32, 

33.  34 
Smith,  Mr  Samuel,  117 


INDEX 


Smithers,   Leonard,   99,    117, 

120 
Stendhal,  24,  43,  47.  48,  49 
"  Strand    of    Twenty    Years 

Ago,"  123 
Stuarts,  last  of,  22 
Style,  25 
"  Supreme  Unction,"  18,  82, 

119 
Sjnnons,   Mr   Arthur,    9,    34, 

49,     79 ;      on     the     poet's 

genius,  9 


Mr 


Tables   d'Hote,    no 
"  Tapestry,"  21,  109 
Teixeira      de      Mattos, 

Alexander,  72,  96 
Temperance,  wave  of,  14,  15 
Tennyson,  death  of,  etc.,  61, 

62 
"  Terre  Promise,"    70 
Thorne,  Mr  Guy,  123,  125 
Titles,  fantastic,  80 
"  To  One  in  Bedlam,"  119 
Tragedy,  103,  104 
Translation,     dif&culties     of, 

from  French  and  Latin,  58, 

Translation,  work  of,  99 


Unfinished 
66 


147 

Symphony," 


Verlaine,  Paul,  22,  81,  95, 

105 
"  Verses,"  98,  117,  119 
Vigils,  loi,  102 
"  Vine-leaf   and   Violet,"    80 
"  Visit  (The),"    120 
Voltaire  quoted,  123 

Wagner  Opera,  27 
Walton,  Mr  F    W.,  42 
"  Waring,"  18 

Warr,   Prof.,   and    the    poet, 
I,  72,  73  ;    Mrs  Warr,  72, 

Wilde,  Oscar,  23,  28,  29,  30, 

64,  68 
WiUiams,  Mr  Talcott,   79 
Wills,  W.  G.,  20,  40 

Yeats,  Mr  W.  B.,  63,  66,  68 
Youth,  anxieties  of,  76 

Zola,  femile,  43,  72;  trans- 
lations of,  96,  97,  98 


THE    RIVERSIDE    PRESS   LIMITED,    EDINBURGH 


DILEMMAS 

Stories   and   Studies   in   Sentiment 

BY 

ERNEST  DOWSON 

CONTENTS.— The  Diary  of  a  Successful  Man 
— A  Case  of  Conscience — An  Orchestral  Violin 
—  Souvenirs  of  an  Egoist  —  The  Statute  of 
Limitations 

SOME  PRESS  OPINIONS 

The  Pall  Mall  says  : — "  Unquestionably  good  stories, 
with  a  real  human  interest  in  them.  .  .  .  The  book  as  a 
whole  is  a  powerful  delineation  of  the  almost  incredible 
meannesses  to  which  men  and  women  may  be  driven  by 
love  of  self." 

The  Daily  Chronicle  says  : — "  Mr  Dowson  embodies 
with  great  skill  and  charm  the  conception  of  life  as 
'a  series  of  moments  and  emotions,'  and  of  certain 
crises  arising  therefrom  which  have  an  artistic  interest 
of  their  own  largely  independent  of  the  longer  '  story ' 
of  which  they  form  a  part." 

Another  Critic  says  : — "  Mr  Ernest  Dowson  has  treated 
these  exquisite  sensibilities,  these  fragile  delicacies,  with 
a  marvellous  sympathy,  an  unerring  sureness  of  touch. 
Times  and  again  a  single  violent  adjective,  a  single 
straining  to  the  forcible,  would  spoil  the  whole  effect, 
and  the  phrase  always  rings  true,  the  epithet  is  right.  .  .  . 
The  book  is  a  fine  achievement  in  English  prose." 


New   York:    LAURENCE  J.    GOMME 


14  DAY  USE 

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